The platform party spoke appropriately against the wrongs committed by the Canadian government in 1914 when it stopped these immigrants from coming into the country; but they avoided the subject of the Ghadar because they sensed a profitless controversy—an argument from about the real purpose of the Komagata Maru. And they steered clear of the subject even though it is not that difficult to explain: it is fair and accurate to say that the passengers began their voyage as economic migrants—not as political agitators—and that the radicalization of some came afterwards. Despite this, it has become easier to tell a truncated story and not delve too deeply. That was evident in 2008, when the prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, apologized for the treatment of the passengers of the Komagata Maru, describing it as “a sad chapter in our [Canada’s] history.” He carefully kept his statement brief, mentioning only the “detention” and “turning away” of the passengers and the “hardship” they experienced and that the voyage ended for some in “terrible tragedy.” Significantly, he too made no reference to the Ghadar involvement, although it would have been familiar to many in his audience, given the settling in which he chose to speak.

This was especially ironic because Harper delivered his apology at a Sikh festival in Surrey, BC, held in the honor of Ghadar party patriots and martyrs, including several from Canada who were closely involved with the Komagata Maru. This was the annual Gadri Babian Da Mela, then in its thirteenth year, and while it was remarkable that he should appear and speak at the Mela and not mention the Ghadar Party or Ghadarites, it was also understandable—as at the later unveiling of the Vancouver Parks Board monument. The Ghadar story would have complicated the inclusive and upbeat message tailored for all Canadians that encased his brief apology, so he kept his account simple and left the Ghadar part out. He was walking a narrow path because he was simultaneously avoiding the wider attention of a formal apology on the floor of parliament in Ottawa—which Sikhs continue to demand—and seeking to deliver his apology to a targeted audience in a British Columbia constituency in which results turned on Sikh votes. He and his advisors were aiming at maximum political benefit and minimum loss—which proved hard to achieve—and in their miscalculation they provoked the immense and immediate ire of much of their Surrey Sikh audience, including members of the Komagata Maru Foundation and the Descendents of Komagata Maru Society. As a consequence, the apology issue has not been put to rest. Sikhs carry on campaigning for a statement in parliament and the leftwing and centrist opposition parties in Canada are now lending them support. In this public discussion, however, the Ghadar connection is still left out. No one of any national political stature has corrected or supplemented Harper on that.

The subject gets different emphasis in India, where the Komagata Maru is remembered as a chapter in the freedom movement. For nearly a decade, a Sikh scholar, Professor Malwinder Jit Singh Waraich of Chandigarh, has been determinedly petitioning the courts for official recognition of the passengers of the Komagata Maru as freedom fighters, seeking to make their families eligible for government pensions. The Government of India at first rejected the claim out of hand, but Prof. Waraich has been staunchly persistent and by stages he has nearly reached his goal. The Freedom Fighter Division of the Home Ministry now recognizes the place of the Komagata Maru in the freedom movement and Waraich’s remaining objective is to get the families onto the pension list. When he started his campaign, the Home Ministry told him flatly that the passengers were economic emigrants, not freedom fighters. But he has successfully insisted that they were transformed into revolutionaries by their treatment by Canada, and that reverberations from their experience shaped the independence struggle in Punjab. Moreover, what he says is a good interpretation of the extensive evidence that, while contradictory in its parts, does add up to a common picture. We can see this and generally agree with him by reviewing what is known.

Professor Wairaich’s explanation fits perfectly with the well-documented history of Gurmukh Singh Lalton, a passenger on the Komagata Maru who became active in the Ghadar after his return to India and who was imprisoned for seven years by the British in India before escaping to the Soviet Union. With Moscow as his base he travelled in and out of Afghanistan and the United States for the Ghadar Party until 1934 when he was arrested in India during a surreptitious visit to Punjab, leading to his further imprisonment lasting until India’s independence in 1947. As a young man, he had been a graduate of the English medium high school in the Punjab city of Ludhiana. He had failed to get into the army — for medical reasons — and had come to Hong Kong in 1913 before the Komagata Maru was organized. Following his six months on that ship he was a confirmed revolutionary. Admittedly, he took a more extreme path than all but a few of his fellow passengers; including his schoolmate from Ludhiana, Puran Singh Janetpura. Puran Singh was a leader on the Komagata Maru, acting as stores keeper throughout the voyage. He was deeply affected by the bitter experience of the Komagata Maru, but never aligned himself with the Ghadar Party or the revolutionary approach. He represented many of the passengers. Although they demonstrated great solidarity right up to the catastrophic end of their voyage, they made their own individual choices and followed their independent perspectives in the aftermath. That could mean becoming an active revolutionary like Gurmukh Singh, or seeking Indian independence by peaceful means, or even adopting a more passive role. We can assume, however, that once they had been turned back from Canada, their deeper sympathies were with the revolutionary cause.

Kartar Singh Mehli was one of the rank and file passengers on the Komagata Maru who never went to prison although, like most of his fellow passengers, he was confined to his village after he got back to Punjab. The author interviewed him twice thirty-six years ago in Vancouver, when Kartar Singh was ninety-two and in the home and the affectionate embrace of his Canadian Sikh relatives, speaking Punjabi during the interviews and communicating with the aid of a family member who translated. He remembered the events of 1914 with great clarity. He had been thirty years of age and retired from the army when he left his village, in November 1913. After waiting in Calcutta until he found other Punjabi villagers to travel with, he passed through Hong Kong in January 1914 on his way to America without knowing anything about the Komagata Maru.

His first attempt to land in North America, at Tacoma, Washington, failed when he got negative results on a medical exam. He arrived back in Hong Kong in April 1914. It was then that he learned about the Komagata Maru and that it had already left. With a group of fourteen he caught up at Yokohama and he was with the Komagata Maru until the fateful ending of the voyage at Budge Budge. He was one of the ordinary passengers, never close to the leaders, never seeking attention for himself, but quietly of his own mind. He had wanted to farm in America after reading in Urdu papers in Punjab of high wheat yields in the United States. That was the ambition that made him so determined to get to Canada or the United States; it seems to have been the initial ambition of most of the men on the ship to eventually acquire land, even if it almost certainly meant starting as labourers.

For most of these men, it was incidental and unexpected that the ship became a classroom in religion and politics; but that is what happened. Gurdit Singh, the charterer and leader, was an actively religious man who had a gurdwara installed in the forecastle of the spar deck, with a finely carved platform with a canopy for the Sikh Holy Book, as attractively finished as in a major gurdwara. Having a granthi on board was as essential for him as having a doctor, and so he hired Sant Nabh Kanawal Singh from Nabha to lead worship. The chanting of kirtan was a continuing practice for the passengers and it helped their mental and emotional stability and contributed to their cohesiveness throughout their long ordeal. And the gurdwara space was also place for political meetings and lectures. That was the speaking venue for Bhai Balwant Singh, and for Prof. Moulana Barkatullah and Bhai Bhagwan Sing Jakh when they addressed the passengers in Japan on the ship’s outward voyage.

Balwant Singh — later a Ghadar martyr — had arrived at Moji at the same time as the Komagata Maru and came on board then. He was on his way back to Canada after an absence over a year as a delegate for the Canadian Sikh community, during which he had met with the undersecretary for the colonial office in London, the governor of Punjab and the viceroy of India to protest unsuccessfully Canada’s immigration regulations. This he told the passengers when he addressed them in Moji, and when he was later interrogated by police in India, he told them that this was all he said. Barakatullah and Bhagwan Singh visited the ship after it reached Yokohama. Barkatullah—later a Ghadar activist in San Francisco—was a Muslim from Bhopal, recently dismissed from Tokyo University and the former editor of an anti-British paper, Islamic Fraternity, that the Japanese government had shut down. Bhagwan Singh was his temporarily guest, staying with him from the moment he arrived in Japan after he had been thrown out of Canada for his anti-British political activity only months earlier. They were already corresponding with Ghadar leaders in California, and when the Komagata Maru reached Yokohama, they brought on board copies of Ghadar Party publications for distribution to the passengers.

When they reconstructed these events, British officials in India had little doubt that that the Ghadar Party was involved with the Komagata Maru and that its main objective was to engineer a confrontation in Canada that would inflame public opinion in India. When the police in India later questioned the passengers, they wanted to know what went on during shipboard meetings, and specifically what people like Balwant Singh had said, and also what the leaders among the passengers had said. Gurdit Singh had two principal secretaries, Daljit Singh and Bir Singh, young men in their early twenties from the same part of Punjab (villages near Muktsar). They were students and they were travelling together on their way to study the United States when they stopped in Hong Kong and got involved with for Komagata Maru. On board, they played leading roles, and Bir Singh in particular was prominent as a speaker and activist. They became confirmed Ghadarites while on the Komagata Maru. When it returned to Asia, Bir Singh disembarked in Japan and took another ship to Shanghai to collect Sikhs for the planned Ghadar rising, while Daljit Singh escaped arrest at Budge Budge, found his way back to Punjab, and successfully evaded the police while working for the Ghadar Party.

British imperial authorities noted — with alarm — the distribution of Ghadar publications on the Komagata Maru, the appearances on the ship in Japan of Balwant Singh, Bhagwan Singh and Barakatullah, and the reports by a few passengers of anti-British lectures during the passage to Vancouver. To imperial authorities it had all the markings of an anti-government conspiracy. But it was not proof, and the Lahore tribunal that passed sentence on Balwant Singh and other Ghadarites in 1917 stopped short of saying that it was. In Balwant Singh’s case, the court admitted that he was within his rights when he spoke at public meetings in Punjab and also on the ship of the grievances of the Canadian Sikhs, or when he agitated to have Canadian immigration restrictions removed. The tribunal imagined that his language had been inflammatory and that it had strained the limits of acceptable protest, but they could not say with certainty that what he had done up to the time he visited the Komogata Maru had been seditious. Instead, they judged him by what followed and in this perspective they saw him going from legitimate protest to intemperate language to seditious action, all within ten months in 1913-1914—the time frame of the Komagata Maru.

This time frame included the outbreak of war in Europe in late July 1914; that world-shaking event dramatically advanced the Ghadar Party timetable. To understand what the passengers and their friends and supporters planned and intended, we have to follow events as they unfolded. The founding of the Ghadar party and the planning of the Komagata Maru were nearly simultaneous developments and they took place against a background of dramatically changing circumstances. When the founding members of the Ghadar party began organizing in the summer and fall of 1913, they were preparing for an armed struggle for India’s freedom that they believed was some distance away. Their main propagandist in the beginning, Har Dyal, spoke at times of as much as decade before the armed struggle would begin, although he also saw the moment that Britain and Germany went to war as the opportune time. Before that, whenever it might be, he believed there was a lot of work to do.

At the end of March 1914, when he was arrested and questioned under threat of deportation by American immigration officials, Har Dyal, described himself as the organizer of a movement, a thinker, philosopher and propagandist who understood very well that his work of preparing for a future revolution could be damaged by any immediate or associated act of terror whether in the United States or in India. The charge against him was that he was an anarchist who concealed that fact when came to the United States. Under questioning, he freely admitted he was an anarchist but denied that made him dangerous. Rather than incite his associates to acts of violence, he said, he had to control them. His immigration hearing took place on Angel Island in California at the end of March 1914 — coincidentally about the time Gurdit Singh chartered the Komagata Maru in Hong Kong. The proceedings against Har Dyal stalled when the immigration department discovered that he already been in the country for three years and had legal residence, but he took no chances and left for Switzerland in May and that took him out of the Ghadar circle. Although he was protecting himself from deportation during his Angel Island hearing, his answers have the ring of truth. His work and that of his closest associates in the Ghadar at that point was education and propaganda, not action, and their main effort was the Ghadar paper from its first appearance at the beginning of November, 1913. Up to the time that Har Dyal left California, the Ghadar party had no direct connection with the Komagata Maru.

Moreover, the Komagata Maru enterprise grew out of a campaign by legal means that had been going on for more than five years before Ghadar party was organized. From this perspective we can see the Komagata Maru’s challenge to Canada’s immigration regulations as a major chapter in a struggle that had begun in 1908 when Canada first barred immigration from India. Canada’s South Asian immigrant community had been contesting this policy from the start: in the courts, through delegations to Ottawa, London and Delhi, and by seeking publicity in Canada and abroad. We can demonstrate the story with one immigrant, Behari Lal Verma, who arrived in Vancouver early in 1908 and returned to Hong Kong in December 1913, seeking to charter a ship to bring Punjabi immigrants to Canada. He was an activist whose efforts led directly to Gurdit Singh’s decision to hire the Komagata Maru.

Behari Lal Verma was a Punjabi Hindu educated in the reformed Hindu (Arya Samajist) Anglo-Vernacular High School in Hoshiarpur. He had spent four years in the police in Suva, Fiji and was in still in his mid-twenties when he came to Canada on the SS Monteagle from Hong Kong with another 182 Punjabi immigrants. These were the first immigrants from India that Canada tried to reject with a newly instituted continuous journey regulation—a regulation aimed at Japanese coming via Hawaii and then used against Punjabis coming via Hong Kong. Their case went to court — with Behari Lal Verma heading the list of appellants — and they won and he and the others were landed. That did not open the way for other South Asian immigrants to follow because the government passed new legislation to close the loophole that the court had identified. But it established Behari Lal on the west coast of North America and over the next few year he moved many times to study in Seattle, Oakland and Vancouver and briefly to work in a sawmill in Portland before settling in Vancouver as a real estate broker and court interpreter. In this time he got to know personally the leading activists in the South Asian community in California and British Columbia.

Behari Lal was living in Vancouver and was active in local South Asian community in October 1913 when the SS Panama Maru arrived in Victoria, BC with 56 South Asian passengers. This became a court case after the immigration department rejected all but 17 (who already had Canadian domicile) and the local South Asian community came to their defense by hiring a warmly sympathetic and politically committed Canadian lawyer. And it became a victory that seemed to open Canada to further immigration from India when the judge in this case found the regulations that the Canada was using to be invalid. This included the latest version of the continuous journey regulation. The judge made his ruling on very technical grounds. It was a short-lived victory for the South Asian community because the Canadian government immediately prepared to reissue its regulations with revisions to meet the judge’s objects. But the community saw a window of opportunity, and shortly after the ruling came down, Behari Lal left Vancouver on behalf of his countrymen to hire a ship to bring more immigrants to Canada. His arrival in Hong Kong in December 1914 generated excitement among Punjabis there, and that was how the Komagata Maru challenge began.

From Hong Kong, Behari Lal continued to report to the community leadership in Vancouver, but he was not able to obtain a ship and very quickly the initiative passed into Gurdit Singh’s hands—that is into the hands of a man who had never been to Canada but who had the experience and personality to put this enterprise together. Gurdit Singh was a successful businessman whose maturity, knowledge, bearing and manner commanded respect. He had spent years in Malaysia and Singapore, with regular returns to his village in the Amritsar District of Punjab; for the previous several years he had been living in his village of Sirhali. But he had come to Hong Kong on business in January 1914 and immediately became aware of the talk of Canada among Punjabis there, and the issue of finding a ship.

Gurdit Singh, like Behari Lal Verma, soon discovered that hiring a ship was difficult — British shipping agents in Hong Kong and elsewhere were unwilling to have anything to do with a venture that was so obviously loaded with political problems, given the hostility of the Canadian and Indian governments. It took Gurdit Singh over two months to secure a ship, and he had success only when he turned to a German shipping agent in Hong Kong who provided him with a ship owned by a Japanese firm. Even then the Japanese owners were unhappy when they realized fully what their shipping agent had done. With that, the Komagata Maru venture was launched. The planning had taken place in Hong Kong with information and encouragement from Vancouver — the Vancouver Sikhs were ready for the Komagata Maru with a supportive Shore Committee appointed several days before it arrived.

Gurdit Singh, who said the Komagata Maru began as a business undertaking, can be taken at his word. He had no connections with the Ghadar Party and no record with Central Intelligence Department in India, although they kept files on all known activists. Gurdit Singh was a nationalist and had no qualms about meeting with revolutionaries like Bhagwan Singh Jakh. But when the two of them talked on board the Komagata Maru in Yokohama, their conversation was about the practicality of the enterprise rather than its political value. Bhagwan Singh, who knew what he was talking about, said that the Canadian government would not let the passengers in. Gurdit Singh refused to believe him. He thought that the law was on his side.

During the months that the Komagata Maru was in Vancouver, Canadian officials became convinced that a core group of the passengers were dangerously revolutionary. This opinion they passed on to the British and ultimately to the Indian governments. Their main source of information was the ship’s doctor, Dr. Raghunath Singh, who early in the Komagata Maru saga became estranged from Gurdit Singh and most of the passengers. Dr. Raghunath Singh was junior medical officer attached to the 8th Rajput Regiment stationed in Hong Kong. He had taken his position on the Komagata Maru during a two-month leave from his regiment, and he brought his wife and small son with him.

When the ship and its passengers were detained offshore in Vancouver, he thought that he and his family should be given special treatment and be allowed to return to Asia on another ship. As the ship’s doctor he was permitted by the immigration department to go ashore in Vancouver to purchase medical supplies — while the rest of the passengers were kept on the ship — and he had a number of conversations with immigration officials and the Vancouver Member of Parliament, HH Stevens. It was then that he pressed his own case while describing seditious lectures on the ship and political divisions among the passengers. Eventually he and his family did disembark and after some time he did get back to Hong Kong on a regular steamer to rejoin his regiment. His testimony, given while on the ship and afterwards, was taken very seriously by Canadian and Indian officials who already suspected a seditious purpose behind the Komagata Maru.

Suspicion worked both ways because in their time in Vancouver the passengers of the Komagata Maru acquired a powerful mistrust of Canadian immigration officials, especially a mistrust of their promises of food and water for a return journey. On the other side, with the officials, deep mistrust began with a conviction that the passengers had no regard for Canadian law and would do whatever they could to get into the country, legally or illegally. That was a starting point and every hint that the leadership on the ship was militantly anti-Empire and fundamentally anti-British added another vigilant level of antagonism and paranoia with the officials.

Gurdit’s Singh’s public statement after the ship reached Vancouver fed this paranoia in a way that he probably did not intend. When he said that what happened to the passengers on the Komagata Maru would determine whether or not there was peace in the Empire, Canadian officials heard it as a threat while he intended it as a warning. His words encouraged them to think that the Komagata Maru was a deliberate provocation with incendiary trouble as its chief purpose, while he wanted to emphasize the importance for the Empire of conciliating public opinion in India.

In the background, the newly-formed Ghadar party was operating from its headquarters in San Francisco and publishing its emotionally worded, patriotic and revolutionary paper. Canadian and British officials were becoming aware of it and were unquestionably upset by its tone and potential influence. They believed — and thought they had evidence — that Ghadar sympathizers were foremost among the leaders both on the ship and on the Shore Committee, the committee organized in Vancouver by the local gurdwara society to help the passengers. Immigration officials and the influential anti-Asianist MP HH Stevens were quick to assume the worst; that prevented them from seeing the Shore Committee for what it was — a broad based South Asian community effort, drawing together moderates and militants, Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims, and the various regional sectors in the Vancouver Punjabi community — Majhail, Malwai, Doabi. The officials were more interested in discovering plots and divisions in the community, which did indeed exist, than in recognizing its common cause which was to support the efforts of the passengers to land in Canada and find work there.

An over-blown story linking the Ghadar Party and the Komagata Maru was about the purchase of pistols by members of the Shore Committee while they were on a brief visit to the United States. Canadian officials were sure that these men intended to slip the weapons onto the Komagata Maru, and they may well have, but the incident caused more excitement and alarm than it needed to. It happened only a few days before the Canadian cruiser Rainbow escorted the Komagata Maru out of Vancouver’s harbour to send it back to Asia. The passengers had lost their case in court and had agreed to leave Canada but they were refusing to let the Japanese crew raise the anchor until the Canadian government had loaded provisions for the return Pacific crossing.\

The ship was still in the harbour when nine or ten South Asian community leaders from Canada and the United States gathered in the American border town of Sumas. Among them were prominent activists like Bhagwan Singh and Taraknath Das from California and Bhag Singh, Balwant Singh and Harnam Singh, all members of the Shore Committee, from Canada. While in Sumas, three of these men went into a hardware store and bought two semi-automatic pocket pistols and two cheap revolvers and ammunition; soon after that, one of them crossed the border ahead of the others, going through the woods to evade the regular check point only to run into a provincial constable who found the pistol this man was carrying in the crotch of his trousers and the ammunition he had in his pockets. That was how this attempt to secure pistols became known.

Buying pistols and ammunition in a hardware store in the US was not a crime, and no American charges resulted. The only person liable to be criminally charged and convicted was the one who smuggled a pistol and rounds of ammunition over the border into Canada. This was Mewa Singh — later remembered and honored in the Sikh community as the martyr who was hanged for shooting and killing immigration inspector WC Hopkinson. But Mewa Singh was not given a heavy sentence for the act of smuggling a pistol over the border and that was because Canadian immigration officials did not consider him a major player. Still, they passed on information about this weapons shopping expedition to the British and Indian intelligence services, building a case for Ghadar Party involvement with the Komagata Maru. In 1917, the Lahore tribunal that tried Balwant Singh saw the Sumas incident as incriminating for him. In his defense, Balwant Singh said that he had crossed the border to see about a plot of land for a gurdwara in Seattle; it does seem more plausible that a large group — including the Bengali activist Taraknath Das — should get together to arrange a property transfer rather than to buy pistols, which could more easily and inconspicuously be purchased by one or two. Moreover, with the Komagata Maru still in Vancouver, they had much else to discuss, and pistol shopping looks like something done on impulse — the three involved had gone into the hardware store after breakfast on their second day in Sumas and after seeing pistols displayed in the window.

From the day the Komagata Maru arrived in Vancouver, some members of the South Asian community had repeatedly tried to buy handguns from local hardware stores only to be refused because they did not have the necessary permits from the city police magistrate. Their desire to get weapons was inspired by the Ghadar leadership, which advocated the collection of rifles and revolvers “to rain a sweet shower of guns on Punjab” to arm and train fighters for the coming revolutionary struggle. But this was looking to the future. Even in late July 1914, one could not have predicted that the moment for action was coming so soon — Har Dyal, for one, still imagined it five or ten years away. Arming the passengers of the Komagata Maru was not anyone’s objective. In fact, up to the first week of July, the community hoped and expected that the passengers would win their case and come ashore in Canada, freeing the ship to take on cargo and homeward bound, fare-paying passengers for its return to Asia.

The immediate opportunity of the ship, from the Ghadarite perspective, was the possibility of getting weapons back to India. With this objective, Ghadarites in San Francisco sent their president, Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna to Japan with 100 or 200 American revolvers; these weapons were taken onto the Komagata Maru at night shortly after it reached Yokohama on its return journey. It was between Sohan Singh’s departure from San Francisco and his arrival in Japan that war broke out in Europe. The revolvers that he carried to Japan were secreted on the Komagata Maru only days after the Ghadar Party’s call to arms. This timing tells us that these revolvers were intended for a rising in a more distant future and it was coincidence that put them on the ship at the dramatic moment when all calculations and considerations changed.

All of the passengers, apparently, knew about the revolvers and it is likely that very few saw anything wrong with having them on board (other than potential trouble with the police in India). But only a handful knew where they were hidden or had anything to do with them directly. What the passengers knew, the police in India — especially at the headquarters of the CID (Criminal Intelligence Department) — also suspected. And the police were more vigilant than ever, and had more arbitrary power over civilians now that war had begun and now that the Ghadar Party had urged its supporters to return for the expected uprising. David Petrie, the CID officer who came came from Simla to Kolkata to meet the Komagata Maru, was in the police party that boarded the Komagata Maru before the passengers landed, and — searching a crowded ship with no easy way to separate the passengers from their kits, and hesitating to do anything so offensive as remove turbans or examine loin clothes — found virtually nothing, no firearms and just a single copy of the Ghadar newspaper that on absent minded or disorganized passenger still had in his kit. (Most of the handguns and literature had been either hidden or jettisoned beforehand.)

Significantly — and Petrie had been briefed beforehand by his police colleagues in Simla — he was not expecting the majority of the passengers to be hostile. At the end of the searches he thought that they were reasonably friendly. Nonetheless, he was surprised by the unity they showed and their strong attachment to Gurdit Singh, even after their months of trial and privation. He had expected a sharp division between a majority and a small group of radicals (or “mischief-makers” as he called them). He thought that the police could separate the majority from this small group of eight men —as he counted them — but he was wrong and that miscalculation was a major factor in the tragedy at Budge Budge where the passengers disembarked and where twenty were fatally shot in an encounter with police and troops at the end of a long contentious day.

Even after it had happened, an official Committee of Inquiry into the Budge Budge tragedy agreed with what Petrie said of the passengers. The Inquiry Committee had a good chance to form an opinion because it questioned most of the men, those who were held as prisoners in Kolkata and as well as those who had been escorted back to Punjab. While predictably putting the blame for Budge Budge solely on the passengers, the Committee described the majority as “harmless” and focused on just thirteen leaders close to Gurdit Singh whom the Committee judged to be “violent and dangerous characters.” Although the Committee saw no threat with the majority, they were still subject to harsh treatment — first of all at Budge Budge and then detention in the Kalighat Central Jail of Kolkata and finally transportation back to Punjab and confinement to their villages for the next several years.

The passengers received this treatment mainly because British India officials were afraid that — if free to do so — they would instigate an agitation in Punjab. That is what lay behind government actions from the moment the Komagata Maru arrived off the coast of India on its approach to Kolkata. And it lay behind the automatic control — in a country long under press censorship — of news about Budge Budge. The government shut down two Urdu papers in Punjab after they made strong statements about the Komagata Maru.

To make matters worse for the passengers, moderate politicians in India were supporting the British against their German enemies in the belief that India would be rewarded with independence when the war was over. The Indian-owned English language press struck a careful balance between mild criticism of the government and censure of the passengers for their “folly” (as one paper put it). The leaders of the Indian National Congress and even government-friendly Sikh and Punjabi leaders in Punjab and Calcutta criticized the passengers. In the beginning, there was little open support in India for the passengers of the Komagata Maru and that did not change until the Indian public’s attitude to the British soured after the war ended. Only then did Gurdit Singh, having escaped arrest at Budge Budge, come out of hiding and begin publicizing his account of the Komagata Maru.

Up to that time, only the Ghadar Party had publicly taken the passengers’ side — praising, condoling with and eulogizing them. It did so in publications that were banned in India and but circulated through expatriate Punjabi colonies and kept and read in Punjabi emigrant homes for years to come. Bhagwan Singh, who had boarded the ship in Yokohama, then briefly assumed the presidency of the Ghadar party in San Francisco, and who had met with Shore Committee members in Sumas, was the author of a Ghadar booklet on the Komagata Maru circulated in Punjabi in 1915. He wrote in emotive and heroic language, invoking the voices of the passengers in calling for patriotic action. “We have sounded the bugle call and the scattered forces are gathering. Death awaits us all, but when we know not; if it should come in heroic deeds, don’t fear it. Arise. Arise.”

Throughout 1914, he had been a primary link between the Komagata Maru and the Ghadar Party. He had met and talked with Gurdit Singh and he knew the leaders on the Shore Committee and then he had become an early narrator of the Komagata Maru story. Understandably, given his revolutionary aims, he merged his perspective with that of the passenger to create a powerful image that emphasized the political meaning of the Komagata Maru without saying much about it as a business venture. It is his version of the story that Canadian politicians today choose to avoid.

The formation of the Ghadar Party and the episode of the Komagata Maru were a foreshadowing of the future for the British Empire — which appeared to be at its greatest when its days were actually numbered. The Sikh community leaders who encouraged the Komagata Maru and its passengers to test Canada’s immigration laws, and those who spoke and organized against British rule in India have been vindicated by what has happened since. The freedoms and equality that they sought have come to be respected. At the time, however, neither the demand for the right to live in a British country (Canada) or the demand that British rule should end in India, was accepted, understood or even considered by a majority of Canadians. And the suggestion by Canadian officials that the Ghadar Party was behind the Komagata Maru strengthened the negative feelings of most Canadians towards the passengers and their ambitions. But the evidence we have seen suggests that the Ghadar party was only incidentally involved. A close look shows that, while the passengers and their leaders had pride of nationality and sympathized with the independence movement, the great majority were first and foremost economic emigrants seeking opportunity in North America.

We study the past, to understand the present and plan for the future. The present is evanescent, the future is unknown but the past is etched in stone. Even God cannot change our past. The present is already becoming the past as we speak. Remember the “Present” is the “Past” of the “Future” (2).

By presenting the biography of Parkher Singh Gill (P. S. Gill) we intend to shed light on the socio-politico-economic conditions in California in the late 19th and early 20th Century. His story will also highlight the struggles carried on by Panjabi Jutt Sikhs in California (2). P. S. Gill was first an Indian, then he was a Panjabi, then he was a Sikh, then he was a Jutt Sikh. Later on he became a Californian and an American. But always remember, to begin with he was a Scythian. To understand his actions and thoughts, it will be necessary to trace his Scythian and Jutt Sikh roots.

Historical and Cultural Background
The Jutts of Panjab are descendants of Asian Scythians whose original home was Asian Steppe which is a large land mass extending from Southern Siberia in the east to an area around the Black Sea in the west. It is mainly a grassland suitable for nomadic way of life. In 700 BC, the Scythians occupied Southern Russia. The average Scythian was superb horseman, tall and sturdy. The Russian Cossacks like the Jutts of Punjab are of Scythian descent. “What men! They are real Scythians!” Napoleon is said to have exclaimed at the sight of thundering charge by Cossack cavalry, as his tattered forces fought end-less rear guard actions on the wintry retreat from Moscow. Although the Scythians formed confederacies, they remained ruggedly individualistic. Their original religion was Shamanism. They did not generally admit authority or superiority and tried to maintain equality of status among them; that is one reason, their Indian descendants i.e. the Jutts of Panjab were not easily influenced by the Brahamanic Caste System of the Hindu Society. They ate a wholesome diet of grain, meat and milk. The Scythian considered owning a horse a status symbol. The horse enabled them to launch swift and effective raids on the enemy. They practically lived in the horse-saddle. In 650 BC they intended their influence up to Egypt. In 514 BC they humiliated a large Persian force of 700,000 men under Darius the Great. They loved music and left behind beautifully carved gold ornaments. In 310 BC, they were defeated by the Sasmartarians. Their main migration to India occurred between 50 BC and AD 50. After their arrival in India first they became Buddhist but later became Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. Migration of Scythians also occurred westward up to Scandinavia and Baltic countries. In Panjab, they gave up their nomadic ways and settled into communities of land cultivators and farmers. It is interesting to note that some of the traits and characteristics of Scythians are found among the modern Jutts of Panjab namely rugged individualism, bravery, frankness and contempt for authority.

P. S. Gill was a Jutt Sikh, a descendant of Scythians. He was not an ordinary criminal motivated by greed or money but was a self-respecting honorable patriot with a great sense of honor and pride. Moreover like Cesar Chavez (3), but as a much earlier time in history of California, he was a supporter of the rights of farm workers and was very popular among them. To understand his character fully we will need to briefly review the history of the Sikhs (4-6). His Scythian descent (7, was responsible for his actions and thoughts.

P. S. Gill was born in the village of Choorchuck, now in Moga District on May 7, 1889; Baba Ruhr Singh, one of the Ghadarite early 20th Century California Sikh revolutionary was also from the same village as was Lacchman S. Gill one of the Chief Ministries of post-partition Panjab. P. S. Gill studied at Govt High School and had 8th grade education. The story of P. S. Gill, his struggled and trials will illustrate the hardships suffered and eventual triumph of East Indians in California (2, 9-34).

Panjab is the land of the Sikhs. Of their 10 Gurus, 9 were born in Panjab. Initially the emphasis was on spiritualism. The first Guru Nanak travelled far and wide in a peaceful teaching style. He had learnt Hindi, Sanskrit, Persian, and Arabic. He developed a large following by the time he settled at Kartarpur. With each martyrdom, the Sikhs became more militant. After the execution of the 5th Guru Arjan Dev, his son wore two swords and maintained a cavalry force. After the martyrdom of the 9th Guru Tegh Bahadur, the 10th Guru Gobind Singh completely militarized the sect and fought many successful battles against the Mughals and their Hindu supporter Hill Rajahs. After the assassination of Guru Gobind Singh, his appointee Banda Singh Bahadur successfully challenged the Mughal Empire almost at its zenith and established territorial Sikh presence in Panjab and Western Oudh. In the 18th century Sikhs were controlling vast territories in Panjab through the 12 Missals. Bhagel Singh occupied Delhi in 1783 and proceeded to build Sikh Gurdwaras in and around Delhi. The Sikh kingdom was established at Lahore in 1799 under Ranjit Singh. Some battles during the two Anglo-Sikh wars are memorable. For the first time during their long successful military campaigns in India, the British were soundly and decisively beaten by the Sikhs in 2 battles, one at Ferozeshahr and the other at Chellianwalla.

Panjab was annexed by the British in 1849. After 1849, most of the Jutt Sikhs went to their ancestral occupation of farming; some joined the British army; the religious matters were largely left in the hands of Khatris and Sahjdhari Sikhs. A splinter group known as Nirankaris came in conflict with the British and started the kooka movement. Their leader Baba Ram Singh was deported to Burma. Many organizations such as Chief Khalsa Dewan and Singh Sabhas were started; they had branches in California and British Columbia. During the period of 1900 onwards, Sikhs migrated to countries such as Burma, Thailand, Hong Kong, Philippines, Fiji, Malaya, Singapore, East Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and California. In Panjab, a canal system converted the barren lands of Lyallpur and Montgomery into fertile agricultural lands. The government increased the water and land tax in 1907.

The Sikh farmers of those 2 districts led a successful campaign against the tax increase. Incidentally this was the first successful non-violent campaign against the British in India. The Sikhs joined the British army and won many Victoria Crosses in WW I and WW II. The Sikhs settled outside India realized that they were not getting the respect they deserved because India was being ruled by the British. The Ghadar (Revolutionary) party was formed at Astoria, Oregon on April 21, 1913 and later was head-quartered at San Francisco. As we will note later P. S. Gill was very active in the affairs of the Ghadar Party.

The incidence of Kamagata Maru occurred in 1914. In its aftermath 12 people were hanged in India including a 17-year-old lad, Kartar Singh Saraba. During Kamagata Maru episode, a Canadian Anglo-Indian policeman, who treated Indians brutally was, in the typical Sikh trait for revenge, killed by Mewa Singh Lopoke who was hanged in Vancouver on Jan 11, 1915. In India, Pandit Kanshi Ram from the village Marauli Kalan (author’s village) near Morinda was hanged. On April 13, 1919, the massacre at Jallianwalla occurred on the orders of M. O’Dwyer, British Governor of Panjab; hundreds of innocents were killed. Again in the Sikh tradition of revenge, M. O’Dwyer was shot dead by Udham Singh in London in 1940. In 1920, Gurdwara Reform movement also known as the Akali movement successfully wrested the control of Sikh Gurdwaras from corrupt Hindu Mahants who were supported by the British. This was the first major successful non-violent Movement against the British; this was achieved by the Sikhs and not by M.K. Gandhi’s Congress party.

In a non-violent movement the British police clubbed to death Lajpat Rai. To avenge this death, Bhagat Singh Sandhu killed a British police officer and he was hanged on March 23, 1931 at the age of 23.During WW II. The British forces were defeated by the Japanese in South-East Asia and Burma. Indian National Army was formed first under the command of Capt Mohan Singh and Col. Niranjan Singh Gill and later led by S.C. Bose. In 1947 India was partitioned into Pakistan and India; this was accompanied by lot of violence and mass migration of populations. Again Sikhs paid a heavy price; thousands were killed and displaced. However, they by dint of hard work and persistence re-established themselves. They have made significant contribution to India’s progress in all spheres of activity including, military, economy, education agriculture and science. The Sikh leaders at this time were Master Tara Singh and S. Baldev Singh, the latter from the village of Dumna (author’s mother’s village).

Thanks to the hard work of Panjabis, Panjab had the highest per capita income in India. The Sikh soldiers and generals played important roles in 1947 in the first India-Pakistan war over Kashmir. In 1965 Sikhs again played a significant role in India’s military victory. In 1966 Panjab was divided into 3 states Viz Haryana, Panjab and Himachal. All these three states subsequently have made impressive economic gains. Almost two million Sikhs are settled abroad and they have made a name for themselves in their chosen professions; many among them are Sahjadhari Sikhs. Their remittances to Panjab, in no small measure are contributing to Panjab’s prosperity and wealth. This short history of the Sikhs will help explain the actions and thoughts of P. S. Gill. When P. S. Gill left India in 1908. The British Empire was at its zenith; Panjab and India were firmly in their grip.

P. S. Gill after 3 days of train journey from Ludhiana to Calcutta arrived in the latter city in 1908. Calcutta at that time already had a sizable Sikh community with well –established Gurdwaras and Social life. P. S. Gill was popular with the local Sikhs and was considered a quiet likeable lad. But like all Sikh youth at that time he was restless and looking for adventure. He stayed in Calcutta for a short 2 years. Sikhs have been serving in British army and as policemen in Hong Kong since the 1880’s. They were able to remit money back home to hang on to their lands. P. S. Gill being outgoing and gregarious made many Bengali friends and also learned to speak the Bengali language.

After working hard he saved money and sailed for Hong Kong in 1910. In Hong Kong, an elderly Chinese lady became a godmother to him and helped him in every way she could. He learned Mandarin and became quite fluent in it. He already could speak, read and write Panjabi, Urdu and also had smattering of English. He spent about 2 years in Hong Kong and 1 year in Shanghai. From Shanghai, he sent home about 120 pound sterling. He reached Seattle in 1913 when he was 24 years old. At this time he became a Sahjdhari Sikh. He had an impressive physique, 6 feet tall and had a handsome face. In Seattle, he worked in the lumber mills. He took active part in the affairs of the small Sikh community and had developed political savvy. Being a Jutt he was looking for farm land. That search brought him to Imperial Valley California in 1917.

People from India (generally derisively called “Hindoos,” although a large majority were Jutt Sikhs) started arriving in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California in 1890’s and suffered prejudice and discrimination , particularly as a result of California’s Alien Land Law,
Similar to what happened to the Chinese and Japanese. The Japanese and Chinese could expect some help from their governments; the East Indians had no such recourse as India was ruled by the British at that time.

In the period from 1890 to 1923, immigrants from India were generally illiterate with agricultural/military backgrounds, however a small number were educated professors and students. The East Indians came long after the Chinese and Japanese presence had already caused resentment and hostility in the white population of Canada and America. The Sikhs in California faced many legal sanctions and restrictions because the prejudice and fear of “yellow peril” was transferred to the Sikhs and they were perceived as the next” invasion” and got characterized as the “Turbaned Tide.” They were stereotyped as being filthy, illiterate, and clannish. They lived in segregated areas along with Chinese, Japanese and other Asiatics. Sporadic violence occurred against them and some were murdered. Panjabi men mostly settled in Sacramento Valley, Central California and the Imperial Valley. Being expert farmers, very soon they started leasing land and began farming on their own. This alarmed the Anglo farmers who felt threatened by their progress upwards on the agricultural ladder.

In 1913, California Alien Land Law was passed whereby Asians could not own land. The relatively more humiliating treatment meted out to the Panjabis relative to the Japanese convinced some of the Panjabi intellectuals in Berkeley and San Francisco to form the Ghadar Party whose aim was to fight for India’s freedom from the British with arms. P. S. Gill took active part in the affairs of the Ghadar Party, lectured to the Sikh farmers and contributed money to the movement. Sikh Gurdwaras were established in many towns; the earliest was at Vancouver B.C. The Gurdwara at Stockton served as a meeting place for Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims. P. S. Gill as already mentioned was fluent in Mandarin, Panjabi, Hindi and Urdu and was politically erudite. He regularly read newspapers to keep himself informed about current events.

Many Anglo landlords, bankers, and lawyers fronted for the Sikhs; they had high praise for the Sikh farmer. Because of the Alien Land Law all agreements were verbal. A few dishonest Anglo landlords cheated their Sikh farmers and reneged on the verbal agreements. Many Sikhs married Mexican women and put the land in the name of their spouses and children; they continued to farm as their childrens’ trustees and guardians. The Panjabis mainly grew cotton in the Imperial Valley but some got into growing lettuce and fruit in the orchards.

Before Imperial Canal was built, the Imperial Valley was a hot, barren, arid and inhospitable desert. In 1901 water arrived in the valley. During the next 30 years many towns were established; farms and ranches were brought under cultivation. In 1907 first electric lights were installed and auto cars appeared on the dusty streets. P. S. gill arrived in the Imperial Valley in 1917.The town of Calipatria was established in 1914; one of the founders of Calipatria was Victor R. Sterling. After water came to Calipatria, rapid and effective development occurred. Hard working Anglo pioneers met their match in the equally hard working and persistent Jutt Sikhs working in Imperial Valley at that time. P. S. Gill through friends and news papers kept himself informed about the Akali movement in Panjab and made liberal contributions to the cause.

The Sikh farmers depending entirely on the honesty and goodwill of Anglo friends, lawyers and bankers in the matter of verbal leases successfully cultivated cotton, lettuce, alfalfa on hundreds of acres in the Imperial Valley. P. S. gill being relatively better educated than other Panjabis assumed a leadership role. He conducted negotiations on their behalf. He was a supporter of the farm laborer. Some old timers describe him as tall, handsome, pleasant, kind and considerate. He had a high sense of pride in his ethnic identity and was politically active. He spoke out against the British occupation of India; when people from Ghadar party approached he gave them full support. P. S. Gill entered into a verbal lease with Victor R. Sterling, John B. Hager and William Thornburg, and cultivated lettuce on 320 acres near Calipatria. The contract stated that P. S. Gill would be paid within 3 days after the crop was shipped out. John B. Hager and Victor R. Sterling were extremely bigoted and prejudiced against the Panjabis; they missed no opportunity to humiliate and insult Panjabi farm workers. P. S. Gill was assigned to chastise them as he had to deal with them on a daily basis and bore the brunt of their humiliating racial comments.

April 1, 1925 in Calipatria in the north end of the Imperial Valley was a typical spring day. P. S. gill got up early and after a bath, he did his morning Sikh prayer using a Gutka (Religious Hand Book). After breakfast he drove to Bradford ranch south east of Calipatria. Sterling and Hager were shipping lettuce out from P. S. Gill’s leased land; the whole crop was worth $ 50,000; he politely requested Sterling for his share of the money .They refused to give him any money. Because of the Alien Land Law, he could not get any legal help. At 05:00 p.m. he again confronted Sterling and Hager about his share of the crop money. As usual, Victor R. Sterling rudely informed him that he owned nothing there and said, “Go away, you Goddamn Hindoo.” At that moment P. S. Gill decided that the time had come to settle the score: the time for pleadings and entreaties was abruptly terminated by that comment, “Goddamn Hindoo.”

At 05:30 p.m. he shot Sterling dead. Hager tried to run away and pleaded with Gill not to shoot him that he will give Gill a cheque for $25,000. P. S. Gill told him it was not a matter of money anymore and shot him dead. After this P. S. Gill drove to the office of William R. Thornburg in Calipatria. When he reached there, Mrs. Thornburg who was 8 months pregnant came in front of her husband and pleaded with P. S. Gill not to shoot her husband. Seeing her P.S Gill said,” I am Guru Ka Sikh, I do not raise my hand on women and children” saying this he threw away his gun and waited for the sheriff.

The trial of P. S. Gill galvanized the Sikh community behind him. Hundreds of Sikh men, women and children were present in the court. Lot of money was raised for his defence. The Mexican farm workers were sympathetic towards him. He was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 14 years prison time at San Quentin.

P. S. Gill was in prison from 1925 to 1940.He is described as a model prisoner, who followed all the rules and got along well with prison officials and other inmates.. In prison he kept himself informed about political activities in India, Canada, England and USA. P. S. Gill was paroled on 11/20/1940 and on 07/01/1946 he became a completely free person.

He tried to do farming in Phoenix,Arizona and again in the Imperial Valley but was not successful. At the age of 62, in 1951 he married Juliana, the widow of his former partner Mota Singh Sandhu. It was not a marriage of convenience as by now Panjabis were no longer alien ineligible for citizenship. However the marriage did not last long. He followed the fate of Indian National Army in Burma and raised funds for the 3 INA officers on trial in 1946.In mid 1950,s he was elected president of El Centro Sikh Temple and continued community work there. In mid 1950’S. P. S. Gill became a naturalized U.S citizen. In 1955 at the age of 66 he married 18-year-old Mexican girl Alicia. Between 1955 and 1962 he fathered 4 sons; when his youngest son was born, he was 73 years old. His sons have done well, one is a lawyer.

Armed with an American Passport, P. S. gill visited India in 1970. He met his relatives and visited his old school. When a native son returns after 62 years, there are bound to be emotional reunions. He praised the modern California Society as being fair, just and basically a meritocracy. He advised his grandnephews and grandnieces to migrate to California. He commented that in 1925 if he had killed two white men in India, England or Canada, he would surely be hanged, whereas a reasonable U.S jury found him guilty of 2nd degree murder because they felt there was enough provocation and his action to some extent was justified. After about one month he returned to California, on Jan 10, 1971 he visited his nephews and grand nephews in England in August 1971. He visited the grave of Maharaja Dalip Singh. He stayed in England for two weeks.

In 1971 he was 82 years old. In 1973 his health began to deteriorate. He was diagnosed with Lymphoma and died at Scripps Clinic LaJolla at 9:00am on Sept 9, 1973; he was 84 years old. At that time there were no crematoria in Southern California; his body was taken to Yuma, Arizona . The caravan passed through the Imperial Valley towns including Calipatria. The journey which had started with a train ride from Ludhiana in 1908 ended 65 years later, half-way around the world in Arizona desert.

Analysis
As is evident from the biography of P. S. Gill, the pioneer Jutt Sikhs of California had to struggle hard to gain respect and acceptance in the society. Many legal and social sanctions and restrictions were placed on them. Hard working pioneer Anglo farmers met their match in equally hard working and persistent Jutt Sikhs. In spite of all the hurdles, they were successful in raising profitable crops such as cotton, lettuce and alfalfa on hundreds of acres. Even though many were illiterate they had the wisdom to organize and support movements such as the Ghadar, Chief Khalsa Diwan and Singh Sabhas. Sikh Gurdwaras played an important role providing a venue for social political interaction. Since there were not many East Indian women and they could not go to India to get married, many married Mexican women who played an important role in helping them get established.

After 1946 (Luce-Cellar Law), the California Society was changing, albeit slowly. As in the rest of the country, multi-ethnicism and multi-culturalism was taking root. After the passage of civil rights act of 1964 and desegregation in the south under J.F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy’s encouragement heralded a new era in America. The previously persecuted, disadvantaged and disenfranchised minorities such as the Chinese, the Japanese, African-Americans and East-Indians, as if released after years of bondage, started to realize the American dream like the Europeans had done before. After the 1965 immigration amendment act, people from Asia stated migrating to U.S. in relatively large numbers. East Indians mainly came as much sought after professionals e.g. doctors, engineers and scientists. But the Panjabi farmers settled in the Imperial Valley and in rural California elsewhere also sponsored their relatives and provided for them to start a now like in California. This new wave of Panjabi immigrants had a significant impact on the Mexican-Panjabi couples and their children.

Discussion
The California Society has come a long way in the matter of diversity, equality and tolerance. Today it represents the model for the rest of the country. Gone are the days of Alien Land Law and other restrictive laws both at the personal and institutional level. Today the minority groups are prominently represented in all academic, professional and business entities and are enjoying the fruits of free and just society. It is really a meritocracy. California really has become a melting pot where various ethnic groups freely intermingle socially and professionally. No wonder California is the most populous state in the union. It is a tribute to the change which has occurred in the American and particularly the Californian Society that the progeny of P. S. Gill, a convicted felon has done as well or better than the progeny of William R. Thornburg, the third intended victim of P. S. Gill. One of P. S. Gill’s sons is a lawyer; the other three sons are also successful in real estate and have management positions. They seem to have been completely assimilated in the American “melting pot.”

Conclusions
At this time, the American Society is probably the best in the world; it is basically a meritocracy which gives a fighting chance for success to a prepared and disciplined mind and is still a land of opportunity. However, the present situation should not lull us into complacence; there is need to stay vigilant lest the latent prejudice may surface again (1).

The newly arrived immigrants from India whether farmers, businessmen or professionals should always remember the sacrifices made and political struggles carried out by Panjabi farmers in the Imperial Valley and rest of rural California. Above all they should never forget the contributions made by courageous and stout-hearted Mexican women who defying the law married aliens ineligible for U.S. Citizenship and enabled them to gain a foothold in the Imperial Valley and rural California. By the same token, the present generations of Panjabi-Mexicans are our people; we should always extend a hand of love and friendship towards them.

Literature on India`s freedom struggle is voluminous. New books are also being added to the list. These books are not objective in their approach and fail to provide a correct perspective on the Ghadar movement, which deserves to be called a forerunner of the country’s freedom struggle. It is noteworthy that the Sikh Ghadarites conspicuously differed from the other freedom fighters, not only in their temperament and training but also in their principles and programmes, their value system and world-view, their political convictions, agenda and outlook. These issues are crucial to the understanding of the character and development of the movement. Harish K. Puri, in his Ph.D. thesis on the Ghadar movement does not study the movement in the context of Sikh history and tradition. He takes no cognizance of the strong ideological moorings of the Ghadarites and calls it a peasant rebellion. He overlooks the social processes and the historical sequence of cause and effect in relation to this movement. Hence, his understanding of the movement is not very accurate.

The Ghadar movement, which was founded on the Pacific Coast of America, in May 1913, was manned by immigrants from Punjab, majority of whom were Sikhs from the Punjab countryside. There were several forces and factors that led to the emergence of this movement. Indian immigrants in America were the victims of racial discrimination. All sorts of insults, indignities and humiliations were heaped upon them. They also faced racial attacks. Their efforts to secure justice in the courts of law failed. They looked up to Indian government`s intervention for remedial measures. They sent petitions and deputations to the Governor of Punjab and the Governor General of India appealing to their sense of justice and seeking help for their cause. These fervent prayers, petitions and deputations evoked no response from the government. Immigrants came to realize that they could not be treated as equals in America until they were free. It was in these circumstances that Hindustan Association of the Pacific Coast was formed. Sohan Singh Bhakna, a lumber mill worker was elected its president and Lala Hardayal was elected its general secretary. The head quarters of the association was established in San Francisco. The foremost objective of the Hindustan Association was to liberate India from the British rule, through an armed rebellion. “Rifles and blood would take the place of pen and ink”, was their motto. They believed that a revolutionary movement required a revolutionary response from the participants.

A historian must capture the passion, fervour and ideological motivation of the creative and vibrant Sikh community which stood in the forefront of the Ghadar movement. He must take into account the spirit, ethos, world-view and goal of these revolutionaries who were determined to root out discrimination and injustice and usher an era of freedom and justice. Rallying centres of all Ghadarites, whether Sikh, Hindu or Muslim were the Gurdwaras. All communities pledged to fight under one banner, as the issue of communal identity was less important for them than efforts to combat British imperialism. They had the urge to stand united in the face of challenge. With glorious heritage of chivalry, selfless service and martyrdom, the Sikh character revealed itself at its best in deeds of kindly service to their fellow countrymen in foreign lands. Gurdwaras enabled them to seek inspiration from the Guru`s word and relate to Sikh values and ideals. Institution of Langar emphasized the principle of equality and universal brotherhood. With their liberal social ethos and tradition of sacrifice embedded in their psyche, the Sikhs displayed enough moral strength to prove their patriotism for their motherland. Ghadar movement was almost wholly manned by the Sikhs, who listed the maximum volunteers and raised huge funds out of their hard earned money. Out of the 24 members of the working committees of the Hindustan Association, majority were the Sikhs.

In Vancouver, the Khalsa Diwan Society and the United India League, with their head quarters in the same Gurdwara, mobilized their protest against the Alien Land Law(1913) which restricted the rights of Indians to own land in Canada.3 They also directed their propaganda against British rule in India and co-ordinated their activities with the branch of Hindustan Association in Vancouver. Revolutionary activity in Canada was further intensified when the Canadian government passed stringent Immigration Law (1917) restricting the entry of Indians to Canada.

The Ghadarites launched a magazine called `Ghadar` in English, Urdu and Punjabi for free distribution. Urdu and English editions of `Ghadar` were edited by Hardayal, whose powerful writings lent him an aura of romance as a revolutionary. Hardayal was inspired by his ideologue V.D. Savarkar. In `Ghadar` magazine, he extensively quoted from Savarkar`s book, `The First War Of Indian Independence-1857.` The book was published in London in 1909 and was instantly proscribed. Punjabi edition of ‘Ghadar’ was edited by Kartar Singh Sarabha, a stalwart of the revolutionaries. Every issue of the ‘Ghadar’ exhorted the Indian people to unite and fight against the British rule. It launched a vigorous attack on the British imperialism. It highlighted the miserable plight of the Indians under the British rule and also the issues of racial discrimination and attacks against Indians in America and Canada. Written in such virile and compelling language, the Ghadar literature became quite popular in India, Europe , Canada, America and several other countries. A few examples of this virile language are given below:

Without blood Opatriots! will the country awake?
Rise, gird up your loins, Rise, Gird up your loins, Rise
Rise, O lions! Rise, Pluck your courage, serve your country.
Why do you disgrace the name of Singhs? You have forgotten the majesty of lions.
O, Brave Khalsa, Wake up, country is in the throes of tyranny.
Follow Guru’s injunction: Play the game of love with your head on your palm:

This motto was written on the title page of every issue of Ghadar.

The British government adopted various measures to stop the circulation of Ghadar and other such publications particularly in India. The outbreak of First World War, in 1914, suited the object of the Ghadar party to spread an armed rebellion in India. The time was most suitable as the British were involved in War. British reverses involving large scale casualties of Sikh soldiers from the rural areas seemed to the Ghadarites a right stage for their objective. They wanted army soldiers to join their revolt against the British. As Germany fought against England, the German Government and the Ghadarites had the British as their common enemies. The Ghadarites sought financial help from Germany to buy arms and ammunition in order to overthrow the British rule. Berlin Committee was formed to help the Ghadarites. Overseas Indians were exhorted to reach India and launch a revolution. They formulated plans to infiltrate the Indian army and incite the soldiers to fight against the British. With financial support from Germany, several ships were chartered to carry arms and ammunitions to India. Filled with death-defying courage, hordes of immigrants rushed homewards to liberate their motherland. It was unfortunate that the plans of the revolutionaries were leaked out to the British. Ships, with arms and ammunition, commissioned to reach India were diverted elsewhere or taken captive on reaching India, by the British Government. Much harm was caused to the movement by the spies, informers and loyalists of the British Government.

The path the revolutionaries had chosen to tread for themselves was beset with all kinds of obstacles and difficulties. They had envisaged that their countrymen would whole-heartedly join them in their revolutionary activities. But on reaching India, they soon realized that they had laboured under an illusion. Gurdwaras in India were under the control of corrupt Hinduised Mahants and Pujaris, who enjoyed a patronage of the British Government. Whereas the overseas Indians prayed in the Gurdwaras for the success of the mission of the revolutionaries, these Mahats and Pujaris expressed no sympathy for their cause. Lack of popular support was a big handicap for the revolutionaries. Yet, filled with an indomitable spirit and an unbounded optimism, starving, thirsting and labouring hard, they toured the Punjab countryside in batches of 15 to 20, collected people with the beat of drums, inspired them with revolutionary speeches and poems and exhorted them to overthrow the British. A young revolutionary Kartar Singh Sarabha used to cover a distance of 40 to 50 miles in the rural areas, each day, on his bicycle.

Ghadarites achieved some success in organizing their revolutionary activities in central Punjab but these activities were more in the nature of sporadic and impromptu guerrilla operations. They could not rise to such dimensions as to assume the shape of a mass upsurge. Ghadarites were able to mobilise support of patriotic elements among the Indian soldiers of units namely 23 Cavalry at Lahore and 26 Infantry at Ferozepur. But their plans were intended to cover a far wider area, in a much wider network. Some of the Singh Sabhas were sympathetic to the Ghadarites, Bhai Takht Singh entertained the delegates of the Ghadar Party when they visited Ferozepur. Daljit Singh, Assistant Editor of the Punjabi Bhain, a monthly publication of the Sikh Kanya Maha Vidyala, Ferozepur, joined the Ghadarites and became a Secretary of Baba Gurdit Singh, a leader of the Ghadar party. According to a report, “the methods to be employed by the delegates of the Ghadar party in pushing the campaign in India appeared to have been discussed in the weekly meetings of the Singh Sabha at Lahore… A member of the Singh Sabha in advocating these measures spoke of creating a spirit of awakening among Hindus and Sikhs.” Ghadarites also enjoyed the support of two popular Sikh mystics Bhai Randhir Singh and Baba Vasakha Singh, who were sent to Andamans as life convicts.

The unfortunate episode of Koma Gata Maru cast a gloom among the Ghadarites and intensified their anti-British fury. The barbarous manner in which the Koma Gata Maru tragedy was enacted at Budge Budge Ghat had no parallel. A group of Sikh immigrants returning from Canada became the victims of British high-handedness. Many innocent Sikhs were mercilessly killed, others were wounded or imprisoned for no fault of theirs. This incident was universally condemned and the Sikh public opinion was greatly mobilised against the British. As a reaction, William Hopkinson, the hated Inspector in the Immigration Department at Vancouver was killed by Mewa Singh, a Ghadarite who later made a confessional statement and was hanged.

In a short span of 4 to 5 years all the leading activists of the Ghadar movement were captured by the British. They were charged with criminal conspiracies. 291 accused were tried: 42 of them were sentenced to death, 114 transported for life and 93 were awarded varying terms of imprisonment. Annals of their courage, bravery and martyrdom have few parallels in history.

A dispassionate historian has to analyze the factors and forces which caused a setback to the movement. It would be befitting to carry the torch of research into some of the hitherto overlooked aspects of the movement like the lack of centralized leadership, lack of unity and the cleavage that grew up between the communities. There were some who flaunted their rationalism, articulate speech and intellectual gifts but they lacked moral courage and would often shun to hold the gun. Lala Lajpat Rai observed that persons like Hardayal kept themselves in the background and avoided danger. They goaded the assassins but covered their own tracks skillfully. The ignominious story of their surrender to British imperialism is often concealed, although it constitutes a black chapter in the history of the Ghadar movement. Hailed as great freedom fighters and revolutionaries, they have to be tried and judged at the bar of history.

This was in sharp contrast to the revolutionaries, mostly Sikhs, who pledged that rifles and blood would take the place of pen and ink. They were simple minded people, sincere and steadfast to their cause, who were never afraid to wield the gun, when needed. Image of a saint-soldier was imbedded in their psyche. The flame of liberty, lit in their hearts, could never be extinguished. They were subjected to innumerable oppressions and tortures, their houses were burnt and their lands were confiscated. But they remained firm and unbending and fought for justice, freedom and human dignity and laid down their lives for this cause. They truly deserve to be applauded, honoured and glorified. Here it is relevant to quote the confessional statement of Mewa Singh, in 1914, who had eliminated William Hopkinson. The statement reflects his socio-religious orientation and nobility of thought: “My religion does not teach me to bear enmity with anybody, no matter what class, creed or order be belongs to nor had I any enmity with Hopkinson. I heard that he was suppressing my poor people very much. I being, a staunch Sikh, could no longer bear to see the wrong done both to my innocent countrymen and the Dominion of Canada… and I, performing the duty of a Sikh and remembering the name of the God, will proceed towards the scaffold with the same amount of pleasure as the hungry babe does towards its mother. I shall have the rope around my neck, thinking it to be a rosary of God’s name.” Mewa Singh laid down his life upholding the glorious Sikh tradition of martyrdom for a righteous cause.

The two categories of revolutionaries had divergent views not only in terms of their revolutionary consciousness but also in their cultural orientation. Uneasy alliance between the two categories often resulted in friction between the two. Some Hindu activists in the movement were proud of their intellectual attainments and looked down upon the immigrant Sikhs as a “unlettered people” and a “crowd of rustics.” Hardyal’s friend, Daris Chenchiah described them as that “wonderful human material.”

The Sikhs, on the other hand, looked upon the Hindus as English knowing Babus who were cowardly, crafty and unscrupulous in the use of funds. A centralized leadership which could integrate the two elements was lacking. The British also played one community against the other. They openly manipulated and opened clear arenas for communal competition. Revolutionaries, who had rallied around Hardyal for leadership, found him lacking in the courage of his convictions. He could not cope with the mounting pressure of Ghadar enthusiasts for immediate sounding of the bugle and recourse to armed rebellion to synchronise with the outbreak of War. In such a situation only those leaders could prevail who were in tune with the overwhelming passion of the masses. Hardayal was at his wits end. His arrest, in April 1914, provided him an opportunity to quit the scene, escape and conceal the inconsistencies in his attitude. He, no longer, remained an uncompromising revolutionary and turned a volte face. He declared that the cause of Indian nationalism could best be served by India’s remaining in the British empire. He deplored terrorism as a ‘mixture of heroism and folly’. He said that majority of Hindu patriots now stood with the Indian Natonal Congress and followed Gandhi who preached and popularised passive resistance and who advised the nationalists to boycott the British schools, law courts, councils and everything British in the country.

After his stay in Germany for 44 months, where he had mustered support for Ghadarites, Hardayal moved to Sweden and turned his critical lens on Germany, describing it as a the “hotbed of militarism and chauvinism,” which must be taught that her dream of emerging as a world-power cannot be realized. An issue of India (London), dated March 14, 1919, quoted Hardayal as saying, “I avow publicly my conversion to the principle of Imperial unity with progressive self-government for all civilized nations of Empire.” Hardayal disassociated himself from the revolutionary struggle against British imperialism in unequivocal terms: “The events and experiences of War have led me to modify my political opinion in some respects. I think that the British Empire in Asia and Africa is, after all, a necessary institution as those people cannot defend themselves against German, Turkish and Mohammedan invaders without the help of British officers and soldiers. In my opinion, the dissolution of the British Empire in Asia, would be a great calamity as it would not result in the establishment of independent nation-states, but only a change of masters. I have, therefore, come to the conclusion that the nations, which now form part of the British empire, should try to receive Home Rule within the Empire and should co-operate with England for the defence of their countries. English administrative genius has built up a fabric which should be improved and developed but not overthrown.” He voluntarily returned his German passport on February 2, 1919. The German Foreign Office, reported with a touch of bitterness that, even after this date, Hardayal spoke of his plans to reorganize the Berlin Committee and to constantly ask for official German aid by letter and by telegraph.

The man, who goaded the revolutionaries to gird up their loins against British imperialism, now wrote, “It is part of wisdom for us not to tempt fate but stay under the protection of the British fleet and arms in our quiet and sunny home of Hindustan, and to make the best of our position in our Empire.” Hardayal also waxed eloquent over the quality and blessings of English literature: “No Oriental nation would be loser if it forgot its own tongue and learned English instead…. A primer of English history was worth more than all the histories of Asia.” At yet another place, he wrote, “The Empire cannot develop as an organic healthy state if the orientals prefer their barren literature and their uninspiring history to English literature and English history.” The man who was a rebel against the British Government, taking part in anti-British propaganda during his stay in Germany (1914-1918), suddenly severed all connections with Germans after his departure from there. His book ‘Forty Four Months in Germany and Turkey’ published in England, contains most vicious denunciation of Germany and an effusive praise of the British Empire. He lamented that “Indians have yet not learned to love and cherish the institution known as the British empire.” India Office London saw to it that the book was translated into Hindi and distributed free of charge in India.

While the revolutionaries clenched their fists, boiled with rage and wrote threatening letters to the man who had blatantly ditched them and jeopardized their movement, it was no easy task for the British Government to judge the motives of a man who had undergone a sudden dramatic change of heart to come forward and shake hands with the British. According to a report of the Director of intelligence, Hardayal was still, at heart, a revolutionary, “who lacked courage to execute his convictions.” The report characterized him as “an opportunist who is apt to temper his conduct to the prevailing winds.” A judgement, in the first Lahore Conspiracy Case, described Hardayal as “a dangerous monomaniac, devoid of any trace of moral and physical courage, who while inducing his dupes to go to a certain fate, carefully kept himself out of trouble.” A man with such marked inconsistencies and profound contradictions in his character and career was certainly not fit to lead the way of revolutionaries.

As noted earlier, politically Hardayal had made a turn around and had safely aligned himself with the Gandhian ideal of Home Rule for India. Culturally, he toed the line of Damodar Das Savarkar, President of Hindu Maha Sabha, although he had leaned towards the Arya Samaj in his early days. In the ‘Ghadar’ literature, frequent references were made to Savarkar’s ideas and ideology. It is noteworthy that there are remarkable similarities between Hardyal and Savarkar. During his student days in England, Savarkar had started the ‘Free India Society’ and had organized students for revolutionary activities. He was charged with murdering an Englishman and was tried and sent to the Andemans, in 1910. During his detention in Andemans jail, under harsh conditions, Savarkar underwent a serious metamorphosis. He decided to renounce his struggle against British imperialism and focus on Hindutava which aimed at establishing Hindu Rashtra in India, through a process of Hindu identity building. One can find an echo of Savarkar’s views in Hardayal’s declaration, “Future of the Hindu race, of Hindustan and Punjab, rests on these four pillars: (i) Hindu Sangthan, (ii) Hindu Raj (iii) Shuddhi of Muslims and (iv) conquest and Shuddhi of Afghanistan and the frontiers. So long as the Hindu nation does not accomplish these four things, the safety of our children and great grand children will be ever in danger and the safety of the Hindu race will be impossible.” This was a declaration which Hardayal chose to call his “political testament.” Both Hardayal and Savarkar passionately appealed to the communal instincts of the Hindus, both delinked themselves from mainstream nationalism and promoted Hindu nationalism instead. Both worked for the narrow sectarian ends of the Hindus, setting a very bad example for the revolutionaries who had pledged to work across communal lines. Secular character of the movement was undermined.

Both Hardayal and Sarvarkar appealed to the British Government for amnesty. Both bartered the country’s independence to secure their own personal freedom. They allowed their selfish interests to prevail over the wider interests of the movement. In a letter dated November 14, 1913, Savarkar wrote to the Home Minister of the Government of India, “If the government in its manifold beneficence and mercy releases me, I for one cannot but be the staunchest advocate of constitutional progress and loyalty to the English Government which is the foremost condition of that progress… Moreover, my conversion to the constitutional line would bring back all those misled young men in India and abroad who were once looking up to me as their guide… The mighty alone can afford to be merciful and therefore where else can the prodigal son return but to the parental doors of the government.” Hardayal toed the same line and bowed before the British Government for amnesty. When he received the letter from the India Office stating that he would be allowed to return to India without fear of arrest or subsequent prosecution, he replied, “I beg to thank the Secretary of State for India and the Punjab Government for their kindness and magnanimity in granting me a legal amnesty. I shall return to India in course of time in accordance with the stipulations which I beg to accept.”

The two apostles of revolution threw off their mask and proved that they were singularly devoid of any sense of honour or grace. They came to serve their own interests, deceiving and leaving the lives and fortunes of their followers at stake. Factionalism and fights in the ranks of the revolutionaries were due to lack of sincere leadership which gave a fatal blow to the movement.

Gandhi’s ideal of passive resistance to the British was not in tune with the revolutionary ideology of the Ghadarites. The story also brings into focus the parochial outlook and pseudo-nationalism of the Congress. Despite the ideological commitment of the Congress to a secular ideal, it failed to emerge as a champion of national unity. It faltered and failed to represent Indian nationalism in the true sense. It identified itself with the religion of the multitude and socio-political interests of the Hindus. Even Savarkar believed that his real ‘enemy’ was not British imperialism but the minority religious groups and the secularists of India.

After many centuries of subjugation, Hindus aspired to be arbiters and masters of their own destiny. They dreamt of a Hindu Raj and their emergence as a supreme power in the sub-continent. They tried to make a religious, cultural and linguistic homogeneity as a sign of India’s nationhood. Their notion of nationalism stemmed from the deeply felt insecurity of the urban Hindu middle class and was sustained, throughout, by their class interests as a counter-weight to the imbalance of their position in Punjab. In its emphasis on Hindu interests, Punjab was far ahead of other states in the country. Resurgent Hinduism under the leadership of the Arya Samaj and the Hindu Maha Sabha, especially in Punjab, stood in the way of united political action against the British. The Ghadar Movement which originated in a foreign land, with the bold initiative of Punjabi immigrants, mostly Sikhs, could not rise to the desired dimensions due to lack of adequate support and cooperation from their own countrymen.

There were several forces at work which caused a setback to the Ghadar movement. In India, Congress leaders looked upon the Ghadarites with contempt. They were more sympathetic to the British than to the Ghadarites. Tilak, the so-called militant Congressite had expressed his strong and open disapproval of the activities of the Ghadarites. Gokhle is said to have openly told the Viceroy that he would like the British to extend their stay in India. Gandhi chose to be loyal to the British during the War and the Zulu revolt against apartheid. Soon after the War, he was awarded the Kaisar-i-Hind Medal and the Zulu War Medal. In 1914, when he bade farewell to South Africa, his departing words were of praise for the British empire: “Rightly or wrongly, for good or for evil, Englishmen and Indians have been knit together, and it behoves both races so to mould themselves as to leave a splendid legacy to the generations yet to be born and to show that though the empires have gone and fallen, this Empire perhaps may be an exception and that this is an Empire not founded on material but on spiritual foundations.”

Gandhi, the Father of non-violence, did not approve of the violent methods of the Ghadarites. By supporting the British empire, he did incalculable harm to the Ghadar Movement. Mendicant approach of Gandhi, along with his creed of non-violence and passive resistance suited the British as compared to the radical tone and methods adopted by the revolutionaries, for the overthrow of the British rule. British facilitated Gandhi’s emergence as an iconic and central figure around whom country’s freedom struggle revolved. Moreover, Gandhi identified himself with the caste-oriented Hindu religious system. Even his call for Ram Rajya aimed at the revival of the Hindu cultural past including the perpetuation of the caste system. Along with Jinnah, Gandhi too was responsible for the two nation theory that divided India into two countries, in 1947.

This was a period of political turmoil in the country. There was a split between the moderate and the extremist wings of the Congress but Gandhi, somehow, continued to be at the helm of affairs. During this period, Reform movements of the Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims which had religion as their prime motive force, were primarily concerned with the socio-religious reform of their respective communities. These movements, notably Singh Sabha Movement among the Sikhs and the Army Samaj of the Hindus did not like to have open confrontation with the British. The British government was also ready “to encourage freedom of thought, ideas of social reform on modern lines and even social revolt so long as these did not touch the dangerous ground of politics.”

The policy of ‘divide and rule’ also suited the British. Clash between the communities stood in the way of united political action. Chief Khalsa Diwan, Amritsar had, no doubt, undertaken ‘to protect the political rights of the Sikhs’ but some of its leading members were patronized by the British Government. Therefore, Chief Khalsa Diwan could not help the Ghadarites. Government aimed at an erosion of the Sikh ideology and control of Sikh shrines through government nominated corrupt and Hinduised Mahants and Pujaris. Sikh tempers rose very high when the priests of Darbar Sahib condemned the Koma Gata Maru and Ghadarite Sikhs through a Hukamnama, issued at the Akal Takht. Two eminent religious personalities, Baba Wasakha singh and Bhai Randhir Singh, who had supported the Ghadarites, were disowned and declared non-Sikhs by these priests. These events made it evident to the Sikhs that a political struggle with the British, with the dual objective of political freedom and the removal of government control over the Sikh Gurdwaras, was inevitable. Citadel of freedom was to be built on the ashes of martyrs of the Ghadar Movement. Grim tragedy of the Ghadar martyrs continued to cast its shadow on the future. Punjab remained in continuous ferment, while situation in the rest of the country continued to be entirely different as a result of Gandhi’s call for passive resistance. Time and again, martial spirit of the Sikhs continued to assert itself against oppression and injustice. As a consequence of agitation against the Rowlatt Act, Punjab was thrown into the vortex of Martial Law. Punjab bore the brunt of British high-handedness, as witnessed in the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919.

The Sikhs continued to be in forefront of the country’s struggle for freedom. Babbar Akali Movement and the Gurdwara Reform Movement to release the Gurdwaras from government control were off shoots of the Ghadar movement which had created an atmosphere of popular discontent. All this paved the way for a new phase in India’s struggle for freedom. This phase was marked by mutual distrust and rivalry among the communities. The battle for country’s freedom was not fought and won on a common political platform. The so-called national movement, led by the Congress in India, had nothing national about it. Idea of India being one nation could never take deep roots. Congress failed to prove its secular credentials.

A close study of India’s freedom struggle reveals that leaders at the helm of affairs always pulled in different directions and played a double game to secure their own ends and interests. Gandhi the greatest protagonist of truth and non-violence failed in his experiments at the time of country’s partition. He displayed complete disregard for truth and fair play in very serious matters in which lives and fortunes of millions of his countrymen were at stake. Yet writing about Gandhi, historians have often mixed politics with history, by bestowing on him nobility, glory and greatness which actually never belonged to him. No cognizance has been taken of the supreme sacrifices of the revolutionaries of the Ghadar Movement. It is time to put the record straight and accord a due place to these heroes in the history of the country’s freedom struggle, even if it is after a century after the events.

Conclusion
Ghadar Movement constitutes a very important landmark in India’s struggle for freedom. Although, it could not achieve its desired aim, it left a glorious legacy of chivalry, heroism, honesty, sincerity and sacrifice. In their zeal for freedom, Ghadarites were far ahead of their countrymen. They were filled with amazing courage and death-defying fearlessness which emanates from a higher consciousness that impels men to suffer and sacrifice in order to uphold causes, dear to their hearts. Saga of their colossal losses and sacrifices for the honour, glory and freedom of their motherland deserves to be written in golden letters. Movement, dominated by the Sikhs, has to be judged in the light of integrated Sikh world-view, revolutionary ideology of the Sikh Gurus and Sikh historical experience i.e. their tradition of martyrdom, which signifies the triumph of the human spirit against all odds. Concealing or twisting of facts leads to erroneous and misleading interpretations of history.

Recent years have seen a great upsurge in empirical research, leading to a paradigm shift in the interpretation of Sikh history, especially in the West. These Western scholars, with their materialistic approach, take no cognizance of the spiritual dimension of human life. They are blind to the colossal spiritual energies generated by the revolutionary ideology of the Sikh Gurus and the phenomenal response they had over the centuries in shaping history. As a result, they provide materialistic interpretations of Sikh history, which are lop-sided and misleading. Louis E. Fenech, in his book Martyrdom In the Sikh Tradition: Playing the Game of Love, denies the role of ideas and ideology in Sikh history. He also undermines the Sikh tradition of martyrdom. He asserts that this tradition was trumped by the rhetoric of the Singh Sabha Movement. A correct evaluation of the Ghadar Movement cannot be made by applying materialistic yardsticks.

The Sikh American community launched its centennial celebration at the University of the Pacific here Sept. 22 with a conference about “The Sikh Journey in America” and the inauguration of a Gadri Baba Museum.

The museum is located at Gurdwara Sahib Stockton, the first Sikh settlement in the United States. To celebrate the settlement, 16 scholars prepared 19 academic papers on the history and culture of the Sikh American community.

Traveling from as far as India and Canada, the scholars gathered at the home of Dr. Sohan Singh Mahil on the night of Sept. 21 to plan for “The Sikh Journey in America” conference.

An audience of 700, many of whom were Indian Americans, listened to speeches about how early Sikh pioneers founded the Stockton Gurdwara in 1912 and formed the Gadar Party in 1913. The party’s goal was Gadar, meaning “revolution,” against British occupation of the Indian subcontinent.

Speeches also addressed the racial bias suffered by many Sikh immigrants to the United States and their struggles to secure rights to land-ownership and citizenship.

Between lecture sessions, the audience enjoyed an exhibition hall featuring posters depicting the history of Sikh Americans, the Gadar Party, India’s independence movement and Sikhs in both world wars.

In his opening remarks, Dr. Amrik Singh of California State University in Sacramento declared: “This conference is about the truth that escapes our grasp.”

Mayor Ann Johnston of Stockton also greeted the conference, praising the Sikhs for their democracy and defense of equal rights, saying they have “continually contributed to the good in the city of Stockton.”

Session I opened with Inder Singh, chairman of the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin who spoke about “Dalip Singh Saund: From Stockton Gurdwara to the U.S. Congress.”

“His victory was a landmark of epic proportions for the United States. He was born of uneducated parents, from a small village in Punjab, and identified with middle-class values of the people. Saund has become an iconic figure,” Singh said.

While Dr. Jasbir Singh Mann spoke on the origin of the Gadar movement and three of its leaders — Har Dayal, Savarkar, and Bhardwaj — Dr. Nirmal Singh Mann from the University of California at Davis recounted the plight of Pakher Singh Gill, a precursor of civil rights hero Cesar Chavez.

Because Asians were denied the right to own land, Gill made a verbal agreement with white owners to lease and cultivate their farmland. In 1925, after they cheated him out his profit from the crops, he killed two of them. Upon his release after 14 years in San Quentin Prison, he lectured on equal rights for all in the United States, England, and India, Mann noted.

Dr. Paul Englesberg of Walden University concluded the first session with a speech on the 1907 Bellingham riot in the state of Washington, when a mob drove nearly 200 hard-working Sikh immigrants out of the town.

In Session II, Dr. Hugh Johnston of Simon Fraser University talked about the immigrant ship Komagata Maru. In 1914, immigration authorities turned the ship away from Vancouver. When it returned to India, British authorities accused its passengers of involvement with the Gadar party and massacred 19 of them.

Dr. Karen Leonard of the University of California at Irvine spoke about the origins of the Punjabi-Mexican community. Because restrictive immigration laws prevented immigration by South Asian women, she said, many Sikhs married Mexicans. There were almost 400 of these couples; their children embraced both cultures.

Dr Amrik Singh concluded the second session with an examination of the Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society, formed in 1912 by Teja Singh, a Harvard alumnus who studied at Columbia University and Cambridge University.

Session III featured a series of lectures on the Gadar Party by Dr. Jaspal Singh of Regional Institute of English, Chandigarh; Dr. Gurdarshan Singh Dhillon of Punjab University; Dr. Tejwant Singh Gill of Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar; and Dr. Gurmel Singh Sidhu of Fresno State University.

The Sept. 23 program was held at the Stockton Gurdwara, where the brand new Gadri Baba Museum, which houses an exhibition of historical panels depicting the Gadar movement and other aspects of Sikh American history, was inaugurated.

Its premier artifact is the printing press used by Kartar Singh Sarabha to print The Gadar newspaper, the first Punjabi-language publication in the United States. In 1915, Sarabha was hanged by the British at the age of 19

Early Years
Dalip Singh Saund was born on September 20, 1899 in village Chhajalwadi, Amritsar, Punjab. He grew up in a joint family, with seven children, four boys and three girls. By the time, he reached school age, “his father and his two uncles had become comparatively wealthy as government contractors constructing canals and other public works.” He went to a boarding school in Baba Bakala near Amritsar and Prince of Wales College in Jammu. He graduated with B.A degree in Mathematics from Punjab University in 1919.

Saund, as a student, was impressed with Gandhiji’s leadership of India’s independence movement and became his ardent and active follower. At the same time, he became a profound admirer of the American president, Woodrow Wilson whose speeches he read over and over again. President Wilson’s inspiring ideas and ideals to “make the world safe for democracy” and to provide “self-determination for all people” appealed to Saund enormously. It was through President Wilson that he became familiar with President Abraham Lincoln. He read Lincoln’s life story and studied his writings which made an everlasting impression on his young mind. In the preface to his autobiography, Congressman From India, he wrote, “My guideposts were two of the most beloved men in history, Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi”. Since Lincoln had influenced him so much, he wanted to come to USA for further studies despite opposition from his family.

Dalip Singh Saund came to USA in 1920 to study food preservation in the Department of Agriculture, University of California, Berkeley (U.C. Berkeley). He hoped to finish his education in two to three years and return to India to “start a canning industry, with the emphasis on canning of mangoes.” However, after a year, he switched to Mathematics Department and received MA in 1922 and Ph.D. in 1924.

While studying in Berkeley, Saund lived in the two-story clubhouse established and maintained by the Sikh Temple in Stockton, California. The temple had bought the house for students from India who could live there rent-free. The resident students paid their gas and electricity expenses and ran the clubhouse on a cooperative basis, taking turns at cooking. During the summer vacations, Saund with help from his professor in the department of Agriculture, was able to get jobs in various canning factories in California.

By the time Dalip Singh Saund finished his education in U.C. Berkeley, he had become enamored with the American democratic system and decided to make his home in America. However, he knew that there was considerable prejudice against the nationals of India living in America and very few opportunities existed for him, an immigrant from India. Nevertheless, he tried hard to find a suitable job, commensurate with his qualifications. At that time, most Indians in California made their living as farm workers and he also realized it to be the only conceivable opportunity for him. So, finally, “In the summer of 1925 I decided to go to the southern California desert valley and make my living as a farmer,” wrote Saund. At that time, he was still “wearing a turban” as a part of his religious belief system.

Farming Years
Saund started his first job as a foreman of a cotton-picking gang, a job that required little schooling much less a Ph.D. degree from a leading American university. His job required him to weigh sacks of cotton that the pickers had picked by hand, maintain the record and to make up their payroll at the end of the week. In between weighing, he would read books borrowed from the library. Many times, at night or early in the morning, he would continue his reading by the “dim light of a kerosene lamp.”

Saund’s “pay was based on the amount of cotton picked at the rate of ten cents a hundred pounds, and sometimes I made as much as eighteen to twenty dollars a day. This was a great deal of money then and to me it seemed a fortune.” From his first job, Saund saved some money and decided to go into farming. But he could not buy or lease land as he was not a citizen of the USA. He leased it in the name of an American friend and “ventured into growing of lettuce” in partnership. At harvest time, the demand for lettuce was negligible, so he suffered a complete loss and incurred a debt that took him some time to repay. Three years later, in 1930, he again grew lettuce. This time, he was fortunate, made some profit and was able to clear up his debt. He also grew alfalfa for which he leased several hundred acres of land. “Even though the prices were low and it was not a very good bank crop, it was the least dangerous and the least speculative crop to grow. For several years, the soil-conservation payments and the payments under the Sugar Act of about three dollars per ton on sugar beets was the only profit that I made in my farming operations,” wrote Saund.

Farming, however, did not prove a profitable venture for Saund. There was time when he could not pay his bills on time or meet his obligations. “I was deeply disturbed and for a while I thought the world would come to an end if people ever found out. I had lost my ranches and was in debt on all sides. I owed money for seed, fertilizers, gas, hardware, on top of what I owed the landowners,” wrote Saund in his autobiography. He could file bankruptcy and clear up his debts, like his fellow farmers did. But he refused to file bankruptcy proceedings when he suffered losses due to harvest or market failures. For him, declaring bankruptcy was a matter of great shame and against the very principles that he had learnt from his parents. He had great difficulty getting credit when he was already in debt. He also could not take advantage of opportunities which his fellow farmers were enjoying. Slowly but surely, he paid all his obligations. “When I look back on my life, that decision to follow the dictates of my own heart was one of the best decisions I have ever made,” wrote Saund.

While studying at U.C. Berkeley, Saund had joined Hindustan Association of America which had chapters throughout the United States in different university centers. Two years later, he was elected national president of the association, which gave him many opportunities to make speeches on India and meet with other groups as a representative of the Indian students at the university. He was an ardent nationalist and never passed up an opportunity to expound on India’s rights to self-government. He took part in several debates and spoke before many groups and organizations. After he moved to the Imperial Valley, he continued with his public-speaking engagements and took advantage of every opportunity to speak, debate and present India’s side – a side of democracy and a side for humanity. Soon, he became a familiar figure, “speaking to California civic organizations and churches about such topics as the work of Mahatma Gandhi and the fight for Indian independence from Britain.”

Since Dalip S. Saund had become well known as a speaker, the Sikh Temple in Stockton asked him to write a rebuttal to Katherine Mayo’s book, Mother India, which was a sensational book and had become a best seller. The author, Katherine Mayo had visited India only for a very short time and in her book “depicted India as essentially the abode of vice and ignorance. The book formed a part of British propaganda, designed to disparage India in the eyes of the world, on the one hand and to glorify British rule on the other.” The quarterly issue of December-January-February 1928 of The United States of India — a publication of the Hindustan Gadar Party — included an article from Mahatma Gandhi, titled “Drain Inspector’s Report.” It also printed an article from Lala Lajpat Rai and reprinted Rabinder Nath Tagore’s “Letter to Editor” initially printed in “The Nation” condemning contents of Mayo’s book. The Indians in California particularly resented the book’s unjust and false interpretations of Indian culture.

During the hot summer months, when work was slow, Saund used to go to Los Angeles where he spent most of his time in the library, doing research to write the book, My Mother India<. which was published in 1930. In the preface, he wrote, “It was only fitting that the Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society (Sikh Temple in Stockton), in its role as the interpreter of Hindu culture and civilization to America, should undertake its publication.”

Wooing Marian
One evening, Saund was invited to speak at the Unitarian Church in Hollywood where he met a young artist, Emil J. Kosa who invited him to visit his home, as his parents were interested in India. During the course of conversation with Mrs. Kosa, Emil’s mother, Saund found out that he was a co-passenger travelling from Europe to New York, on the same ship S.S. Philadelphia, with Mrs. Kosa and her eleven-year-old daughter, Marian. At Emil’s suggestion, Saund posed for a portrait by Emil Kosa Jr which required several sittings. Saund also agreed to wear turban which he had given up after coming to the United States. By the time, the portrait was finished, Saund had become a friend of the family and a frequent visitor to Kosa home.

Emil Kosa Sr. was an artist who had migrated from Hungary in 1907. Emil Kosa Jr was a famous Californian painter known for his landscape paintings. “He worked in the 20th Century Fox studios as a special effects artist. He won an Oscar in 1963 for his work on the film, Cleopatra, and worked on movies that included Doctor Doolittle, The Sound of Music and John Goldfarb, Please Come Home.”

Marian Kosa, now nineteen years old, was a student at the University of California, Los Angeles. Saund had fallen in love with her but was not sure if he could marry “a very beautiful and talented college girl and daughter of a well-known artist.” He was a foreigner in a country where the laws prevented him to become a citizen or own a home, without a secure job and no clear future. Still, Saund carried on his courtship “with persistence and unsurpassed devotion.” Saund wrote, “The most persuasive weapon I had was the fact that I knew many passages of English, Hindu, and Persian poetry. I used to recite them to Marian and she would laugh and find great delight in them.” One Sunday afternoon, Saund proposed to Marian by writing in the sand at Laguna Beach, “If I prove myself worthy, will you become mine?” In 1928, Saund and Marian, born of immigrant Czech parents, were married. Saund remarked, “Our marriage was the big turning point in my life.”

Marian’s parents built a house immediately below their home on a hillside property they owned. She continued her studies “until the birth of their son in February, 1930.” When the baby – Dalip Jr. – was little older, Marian moved to Imperial Valley to their home on a ranch near Westmorland. The old ranch house had no running water at that time or electricity. Saunds had two more children, daughters, Ellie and Julie.

Citizenship for Indians
After Saund moved to the Imperial Valley, he started taking an active role in the socio-political activities of his new homeland. He joined Toastmasters’ Club and soon became its president. Later, he served as lieutenant governor and then as district governor. He and his wife also belonged to the tennis club in Westmorland. Saund wrote, “I had become a close part of the American life. I had married an American girl, and was the father of three American children. I was making America my home. Thus it was only natural that I felt very uncomfortable not being able to become a citizen of the United States. My social life may have been full and rewarding, but the political desire in me was sorely frustrated.” He also started attending official meetings of County Democratic Party Central Committee. He was welcomed as a party worker and an active participant but not allowed to vote in the decision making process as he was not a citizen of the United States. His lack of citizenship of America prevented him to take active role in the political process of his adopted country. As such, he was disillusioned to see “the bars of citizenship shut tight” against him.

For Indian farmers, Alien Land Act was one of the most oppressive measures. A few Indian farmers had married American citizens and leased property in their wives’ name. But some landowners did not like leasing land to an Asiatic’s wife for fear of violating the Alien Land Law. Some Indian farmers had bought or leased land in the name of their American friends who sometimes exploited them and even deprived them of their harvest. The grant of citizenship rights would allow Indians to own or lease land and property and “nullify the effect of California’s Alien Land Law,” wrote Saund. It could also open opportunities as they existed for everybody else in America. He was convinced that it was time to gain U.S. citizenship and invest in a country that he and his family called home.

Saund, after consulting with the board of directors of the Hindustan Association of America in Imperial County, formed the India Association of America in 1942 with the main objective to mobilize Indians in California for citizenship rights. The headquarters of the newly formed association was established in Los Angeles and he was elected as its first president. It was not an easy task to obtain US citizenship rights when the Supreme Court of the United States, in 1923, had declared that natives of India were not eligible to U.S. citizenship. In rejecting an appeal of Bhagat Singh Thind (to whom Saund dedicated his book, My Mother India) about revocation of his U.S. citizenship, the judge held that while persons from India were Caucasians, they were not “white persons”, and therefore were “aliens ineligible to citizenship”. Thus, a legal solution was ruled out as a possibility. An amendment of the Immigration laws with a special bill to be passed in the Congress of the United States appeared an alternative worth pursuing. Saund also knew that it was a major undertaking to convince the elected representatives of the American people to introduce a bill in the Congress for the grant of U.S. citizenship to a handful of Indian nationals.

There were about 2,000 or possibly 2,500 Indians who could benefit by becoming citizens of USA. They were very skeptical that the Congress would pass a major bill aimed at upsetting a historic decision of the U.S Supreme Court. “It wasn’t that they didn’t want citizenship rights, but they had suffered so many hardships and had been knocked about so much that it was very difficult for them to believe that there was a chance of our winning,” wrote Saund.

Saund, after forming India Association of America, started editing a news bulletin to educate and to convince the India-born residents of California. Also, with the help of some dedicated Indians, he made several trips to all parts of California, mobilized the Indian community, mailed out thousands of letters in Punjabi language, and raised funds. The mobilization took some effort but soon it gained momentum and Indians in the USA were ready for all-out effort to re-gain citizenship rights.

Saund found Indian groups such as New York based Indian League of America headed by J.J. Singh and India Welfare League headed by Mubarak Ali Khan, which had objectives similar to his India Association of America. He supported their lobbying efforts in Washington and provided financial assistance with money raised from Indian farmers in California. These groups were able to convince Congresswoman Clare Booth Luce from Connecticut and Congressman Emanuel Cellar from New York who jointly introduced a bill in Congress. However, selling this concept to the majority of the members in the U.S. Congress was an uphill task, more so, as the passage of the bill could open the door for other Asians who were similarly deprived of citizenship rights. Indians continued running into roadblocks in finding a powerful force to push it through. Luckily, in 1946, after four years of continuous struggle, President Truman took special interest in its passage and Luce-Cellar bill was finally approved by both houses of Congress and signed by President Truman on July 2, 1946. It was a great triumph and truly 2nd of July is the Independence Day for celebration by all Indians in the United States.

Saund as Judge
Saund had maintained a keen interest in the political situation in the United States ever since his arrival in 1920. He had studied the personalities and programs of the presidential candidates, both during the 1924 and the 1928 campaigns. He admits that “By 1932, I had positively and definitely become a Democrat by outlook and conviction.” After he became naturalized citizen on December 16, 1949, he was ready to take more active part in the political process of his adopted homeland. The primary election was a few months away in June 1950. A close friend, Mr. Glen Killingsworth who was a judge in Westmorland with whom Saund had worked unofficially for many years in Democratic Party affairs, encouraged him to run for a seat on the Imperial County Democratic Central Committee. Saund’s first political victory was without any opposition. He continued participating actively in Democratic Party activities and rose to be a delegate in three Democratic National Conventions in 1952, 1956 and 1960.

A few weeks after the election, Judge Killingsworth died suddenly due to a heart attack. It was a great personal loss for Saund for he had watched him closely in his work as a judge for many years and had admired the office and the way his now deceased friend had performed in that capacity as a judge. Saund was persuaded to become a candidate for that office in the general election in November 1950. He personally knew nearly all the voters in the judicial district, and he started a vigorous and successful campaign by ringing doorbells, meeting people and asking for their support.

Dalip S. Saund was elected as a judge solely due to his exemplary grassroots campaign. No other foreigner had by then been elected to any high office in Imperial County. Saund’s victory for judgeship in Westmoreland disappointed his opponent – a white candidate – who found a loophole in the election law. Saund was denied judgeship on the technicality that he had not been a citizen for one full year by the election date. Saund’s friends started circulating a petition addressed to the County Board of Supervisors who were to appoint a judge. More than twice the number of voters than had originally voted for Saund signed the petition. Most of the mayors of cities in Imperial county, the presidents and leaders of different civic and professional organizations, including the chairmen of both the Democratic and Republican county central committees had signed a separate petition. The daily newspapers in the county urged the Supervisors through their editorials for appointment of Saund as a judge. But he lost his first political battle not because of lack of public support or popularity among voters but through that minor technicality.

Saund was disappointed but by no means discouraged. He wrote in his autobiography, “I harbored no bitterness against my opponent. Throughout 1951 and 1952, I continued my activities in support of Community Chest drives, the Boy Scouts, and particularly the March of Dimes for which I was the chairman for two years.” Involvement in mainstream community organizations kept Saund in close contact with the people of his district. When he ran for the position of judge in 1952, he ran against an incumbent, appointed by the County Board of Supervisors, who was an established businessman and a member of the church board. The campaign also had taken a racial overtone; some people would not go for the “Hindu for judge”. But most of the people had felt that injustice was done to Saund the previous time and now was the opportunity to correct it. Saund won the election and served as judge for four years until his election to the Congress of the United States in 1956.

As a judge, Saund was credited with cleaning up the Westmoreland red light district. He awarded stiff fines and jail sentences. He also involved Border Patrol to “raid the houses and charge the prostitutes with vagrancy” as they were from the neighboring country, Mexico. To the “vice queen” of the town, he gave the “stiffest sentence” under the law, a fine of $l,000.00 and a year in the county jail. Her husband, on the same charge, skipped bail and fled to Mexico. Within Saund’s time, “the doors of the evil establishments were locked and boarded for good.”

Seeking Higher Office
In 1954, Judge Saund was elected chairman of the Imperial County Democratic Central Committee and became a member of the Democratic Executive Committee of the state of California. In the same year, Mr. Bruce Shangle of Riverside County became the Democratic nominee from the 29th congressional district. He knew that he had to campaign hard in Riverside County to win as 80% of the voters resided in that county. So, it fell on Judge Saund to manage the campaign of Mr. Shangle in Imperial County and speak on his behalf to various service clubs and candidates’ forums. Mr. Shangle did not win but it gave Judge Saund a very valuable experience into the workings of a congressional office and the duties that a Congressman has to perform.

Judge Saund by now had become quite well known in Imperial County. In October, 1955, he decided to be a candidate from the 29th Congressional district. He was confident of loyal support from the County Democratic Party but was not sure of similar support from Riverside County. Mr. Bruce Shangle, who ran unsuccessfully in the last election, assured Saund of his full support.

Tom Patterson, a columnist and Riverside Historical Society Member, in his article, “Triumph and Tragedy of Dalip Saund” published in California Historian in June 1992, gave four major activities for which Saund had become a familiar name in Imperial county, namely “He was an active Democratic politician. He was Westmorland justice of peace and commonly referred to as Judge Saund. He was a major farmer and he also had a distributorship for chemical fertilizer, a business that was said to have grossed $250,000 per year.”

Judge Saund’s Democratic opponent was also a well-known Riverside County attorney, active in California politics and at one time had been a candidate for attorney general of the state of California. He tried to get Judge Saund disqualified on the technical grounds that he had not been a citizen for seven years before he could become a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. First the Appellate Court and then the Supreme Court of California dismissed the petition on the grounds that the sole judge of the qualifications of a member of the House of Representatives is the House itself.

In Riverside County, Judge Saund had not yet become a familiar name to the voters. But they read his name on the front pages of every newspaper in the district, not one time but three times, first when the appeal was filed, second time when it was turned down by the lower court and third time when the Supreme Court rejected it. No amount of money could have bought him as much publicity and name recognition as these news reports. But his Democratic opponent did not give up. He, in his newspaper and radio advertisements, attacked Saund of his being an Indian and not an American and quoted passages from Saund’s book, My Mother India, out of context. Even his name “Dalip Singh” was boldly printed and last name “Saund” in small letters to draw attention of the voters that Judge Saund was really not an American. All the tactics used against Judge Saund apparently did not hurt him. He won the primary with a tremendous majority which enhanced interest in his candidacy beyond California’s borders.

In the general election, Saund faced Jacqueline Cochran Odlum, recipient of many prizes in the field of aviation, leader of women fliers during World War II and wife of a multi-million financier. She was contesting from a district that has always elected a Republican in its entire history of the congressional district. She had rich supporters and was a personal friend of the President of the United States. At her barbecue rallies, people not only would come to see the invited celebrities, such as Bob Hope but her also, a celebrity in her own right. She even had the Vice President Richard Nixon come to Riverside to speak for her.

Judge Saund received endorsement of US Senator John F, Kennedy who said, “Judge D. S. Saund has proved conclusively his understanding of and devotion to the basic meaning of our American ideals. After reading the moving story of his tireless and patient struggle to attain full citizenship rights for his countrymen and for himself, you will understand a measure of the love he bears for his America and for her people. We need this man’s wisdom and loyalty in the Congress of the United States. The election of Judge D. S. Saund will promote international goodwill and greatly advance the cause of world peace.”

Judge Saund faced formidable handicaps but was not intimidated. With the help of Democratic groups in Riverside County, his friends and neighbors began to sponsor a series of free barbecues which gave him an opportunity to meet people and communicate his message. His whole family, his wife Marian, three children (Dalip Jr, Julie and Ellie), his son-in-law Dr. Frederick Fisher and daughter-in-law Dorothy Saund and scores of volunteers kept busy ringing doorbells and handing out literature. He did not have funds to buy space on commercial billboards, so his volunteers made homemade billboards on 4-foot by 8-foot plywood sheets. He put up these billboards throughout the district and they apparently turned out to be very effective. His wife and daughter organized and carried out an intensive campaign of registration of voters and “passed out 11,000 Saund circulars” before the election. They had visited thousands and thousands of homes with the help of dedicated volunteers and made a definite impact on many voters. Much after the election, people would come up to Saund and say, “I met your daughter”,……..or “your son-in-law called at my house….. and that is when I decided that I was going to vote for you.”

In the Preface of his autobiography, Congressman from India, Saund wrote, “Two of the greatest satisfactions in my professional life came first, when my children, together with my daughter-in-law and son-in-law, volunteered to ring doorbells for me in the campaign in 1956, and second, when in that same election the citizens of my own small home town of Westmorland, my neighbors of thirty years, voted over 80 per cent in my favor as an expression of their confidence.”

There were very few Indian Americans registered to vote in the 29th congressional district. There were not many ethnic voters either; the large majority being Caucasian Americans. He did not adopt a new religion in his new country nor did he Americanize his name to sound less ethnic. His opponents repeatedly tried to exploit his being an Indian. But he had completely integrated with mainstream America while maintaining his heritage. He represented grass-roots philosophies and identified with middle-class values, the values of the people he lived with. They were the people he depended on for support.

Judge Saund had farmed for twenty-five years in Imperial County and was thoroughly acquainted with the problems of the farming communities in both counties. He believed that farmers needed government’s protection in order to get a fair share of the economic reward. So the farmers in the 29th district were confident of his representation of them in the U.S. Congress. But, it was from the cities that he was trying hard to get a fair share of votes. His hard work did bring him enough votes that in the general election, in November 1956, “the first native of Asia” was elected to the prestigious United States Congress with a 3% vote margin. Today, Indian Americans, seeking political office invoke Saund’s name, much the same way, as Saund himself invoked Gandhi and President Lincoln’s name. Like them, he is a source of inspiration and a worthy role model to look up to.

Saund as Congressman
As a new congressman, Saund wanted to obtain an appointment on a good committee. His district contained three of the largest irrigation districts in the United States and his preference was to be placed on the Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, which had charge of all reclamation and irrigation projects. He knew Congressman Cecil R. King from Los Angeles who was a good friend and mentor to Saund and in charge of committee appointments. However, Congressman King told him that there was no chance for him to get an appointment there. Saund had a strong knowledge of foreign affairs which could have been a reason that he was “appointed and confirmed as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee,” a rare opportunity for a freshman in the US Congress. In his second term, he was appointed to the Interior and Insular Committee. He succeeded in amending the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 which lead to the creation of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the entire reorganization of how the U.S. distributed Foreign Aid. Saund’s amendment gave the U.S. more control on how its foreign aid money was spent by reducing the lifespan of foreign aid agreements. This was meant to keep American foreign aid money out of the hands of governments that were unpopular or hostile to the U.S.

Saund, while campaigning for election to the US Congress, promised to the voters that he would visit India and the Far East and present himself – an Asian elected to the US Congress – as a living example of American democracy in practice. “In the winter of 1957, I was able finally keep the promise I had made in the campaign. I was making this tour as an official representative of the Congress of the United States. I had been designated by the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives as a one-man subcommittee to tour the countries of Southeast Asia and study the working of the mutual-security program in the area.” wrote Saund.

Congressman Saund was welcomed by various Asian countries, including Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines and India as an official emissary of the House of Representatives. In Japan, Saund visited Tokyo and Riverside’s sister city, Sendai. In Indonesia, he met with President Sukarno who was “an intense, dedicated nationalist, the kind of man who wanted power and enjoyed exercising it.” There was unlimited jubilation and large crowd greeted him everywhere he went in India. In Calcutta, he was given an elaborate and heartwarming reception. In New Delhi, he was accorded “enthusiastic reception from thousands of people at the airport.” Saund addressed audiences at several colleges and of business groups. He also addressed a meeting of the Foreign Policy Association.

The most outpouring of enthusiastic people was in Amritsar where he had graduated from the University of the Punjab, and in Chhajalwadi, his birthplace where some eleven thousand people were seated in the school grounds. The poem that was read at his reception, moved him so much that he could not hold back the tears. Saund spoke in Punjabi and appreciated the people for the tumultuous welcome. His wife Marian also spoke a few words in Punjabi and got a tremendous ovation.

While in New Delhi, Saund addressed the joint houses of Parliament, an honor which is normally reserved for visiting heads of states. At the end of his talk, he said, “If democracy and freedom are to survive in this world, there must be a close liaison between the two greatest democracies of the world, the Republic of India and the United States of America.”

In May, 1962, Congressman Saund suffered a severe stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body. He was not able to regain his speech but he could walk with a walker. He died at the age of 74 on Sunday, April 22, 1973, in Hollywood, California and was cremated in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California. His ashes were interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park.

Saund was survived by his wife, Marian who took care of him during his prolonged illness; daughters, Julie Fisher and Ellie Ford, both teachers after graduation from UCLA; son Dalip Saund Jr. who graduated from California Institute of Technology in mechanical engineering and then earned a doctorate in anthropology at UCLA; later served as a lieutenant in the Korean War. All three of his offsprings had their spouses and children.

Dalip Singh Saund was born in a Sikh family and preserved his religious beliefs and practices by keeping beard, long hair on his head and wore turban when he arrived in the USA. Sometime after he moved to Southern California in 1925, he gave up the distinguishing marks of his faith, although he continued to be a Sikh. He was connected with the Sikh temple, Stockton and served as secretary from January 18, 1948 to December 26, 1949. He could read and write Punjabi in Gurmukhi script – the script in which Sikh sacred book, Guru Granth Sahib is written. He also recorded minutes of meetings of the temple committee in Gurmukhi script in the Minutes Register.

Saunds face Discrimination
Saund wrote, “There is no room in the United States of America for second-class citizenship.” However, he himself was treated as second-class citizen for most of his life. He wrote about the prejudice and discrimination that existed against all Asiatics, including the Indians and has mentioned this several times in his autobiography. He says, “There is no denying the fact that there were persons in Imperial County who were prejudiced and antagonistic toward me.” Again on page 45 of his autobiography, he writes, “I was aware of the considerable prejudice against the people of Asia in California and knew that few opportunities existed for me or people of my nationality in the state at that time. I was not a citizen and could not become one. The only way Indians in California could make a living at that time was to join with others who had settled in various parts of the state as farmers.” Even as farmers, they could not buy land and property. The California Alien Land Law of 1913 banned the ownership of land and property to “aliens ineligible for naturalized citizenship.” The Naturalization Act of 1790 stated that only whites were able to obtain naturalized citizenship. There were ten other states that passed land ownership laws similar to this during 1913 to 1923. As a result, Asian immigrants found themselves subjected to this racially discriminatory law.

Tom Patterson described some incidents of discrimination which Saund and his family faced. Patterson’s uncle by marriage, Enoch Gullett, an associate of Saund in the Westmorland Chamber of Commerce and some other members had made reservation at a hotel in the Grand Canyon. Both Saund and Gullett slept in an automobile after the hotel denied admittance to Saund. In 1991, Marian Saund told Patterson about an incident which happened in Stockton. She registered in a hotel for herself, Saund and their son, then their only child. When Saund arrived after the meeting, he wasn’t admitted. All three left the hotel.

According to Patterson, the family life of the Saunds was altered by what was described as Marian Saund’s allergy for the pollen of Bermuda grass. She and the three children moved to Los Angeles in 1942. The real reason was the racist treatment of the children in the Westmorland schools where they were taunted as “half breeds.” Saund never complained of, or even mentioned, discriminatory treatment against himself, much less made an issue of it.

Saund had known a person for fifteen years and this person had also worked at times for Saund. During the campaign in 1950, this person told a friend, “I agree that Saund would make a good judge, but I just can’t go for a Hindu for judge.” About his 1952 campaign, Saund wrote an anecdote. “One day, just three days before the election, a prominent citizen who was opposing me bitterly saw me one morning in the town restaurant and said in a loud voice: ‘Doc, tell us, if you’re elected, will you furnish the turbans or will we have to buy them ourselves in order to come to your court?’ ‘My friend,’ I answered, ‘you know me for a tolerant man. I don’t care what a man has on top of his head. All I’m interested in is what he’s got inside it.’ All the customers had a good laugh at that and the story became the talk of the town during the next few days.”

In his campaign for Congress, his opponents in the primary and general election made an issue of Saund’s race in order to whip up anti-immigrant and racist sentiment. His Republican opponent, Jacqueline Odlum, linked Saund with communists and the left-leaning government of India.

The Declaration of Independence in 1776 declared “All men are created equal.” But The Naturalization Act of 1870 did not apply to “all men” but to Asians. It was a piece of discriminatory legislation, denying Asians the right to become naturalized citizens. Another discriminatory legislation was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, initially meant for Chinese but later applied to all Asians. In 1907, there were race riots against Indians in Bellingham and all Indians were expelled from the city. Similar incidents took place in some other places. The police provided no security to Indians. The Asiatic Exclusion League and the labor unions used violence and riots, as an effective method of excluding the Indians from jobs and residential communities. They also kept incessant pressure on elected officials and politicians who, in 1917, succeeded in getting an immigration law passed by the United States Congress over the veto of President Woodrow Wilson. The new law prohibited immigration from virtually all of Asia.

According to the Cable Act of 1922, any American woman who married an Asian alien lost her U.S. citizenship. In 1923 the Supreme Court had issued an opinion that Indians, although considered as Caucasians, were ineligible for citizenship because they were not “white.” Anti-Asian sentiment was running rampant across the country at that time. Success was not easy for any Asian. Saund’s election to the US Congress as the first American of Asian origin was an extraordinary accomplishment. Saund, a farmer in Southern California and born of uneducated parents in a small village in Punjab, became the first, and so far the only Sikh member of United States Congress. It was a landmark achievement of epochal proportion, in the history of not only Sikh immigrants, but also that of other Indians and Asians in the U.S.

Recognition comes to Saund
Phil Tajitsu Nash, in his article on Saund published in Asian Week in September, 1999, says, “Saund’s main accomplishment is the pride he gave future generations of politicos and activists.” He was a groundbreaker and broke the color barrier for Asian American participation in U.S. politics. Mr. Nash also raised a question, “Why isn’t Saund better known?” He then answers the question by saying, “Perhaps the lack of knowledge reflects the greater lack of awareness of Asian American pioneers and history in general.” In 1999, Don Nakanishi, head of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA, said, “He (Saund) is the unsung pioneer of Asian American electoral politics. On his 100th birthday, I hope we shine a bright light on his political career and the lessons we can learn from his remarkable achievements.”

However, no organization, whether Sikh, Punjabi, Indian or Asian, organized any event to celebrate Saund’s 100th birthday. Three years later, in 2002 in Los Angeles, three organizations, Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (Inder Singh), Indian American Friendship Council (Dr. Krishna Reddy), and Global Punjabi Diaspora (Dr. H Sahota), took initiative and jointly organized a tribute seminar and banquet to celebrate the 45th anniversary of election victory of late Congressman Dalip Singh Saund. Many “firsts” of the Indian community, including Ujjal Dosanjh, former premier of British Columbia and then Federal Health Minister in Canada, Kumar Barve, Majority Leader in the Maryland State Assembly, Satveer Chaudhary, Minnesota State Senator, and Dr. Joy Cherian, former commissioner of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, participated in the event.

The tribute banquet, being the first of a kind, was highly publicized and promoted. Several Indian newspapers in the US including India West, India Journal, and India Post, and News India Times, published articles about the late Congressman. Some newspapers in India, such as Times of India and Tribune, and a few American newspapers including Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register also published articles about Saund and his contributions. The awareness thus created about the Indian pioneer encouraged some community activists in the United States to organize seminars, prompted college students to write term papers about Saund and motivated some organizations to institute awards in Saund’s name.

The Indian American Heritage Foundation (Inder Singh) petitioned the U.S. Postal Service in Washington D.C to issue a commemorative stamp on November 6, 2006 in honor of the first U.S. Congressman of Asian origin, the India born Dalip Singh Saund, at the fiftieth anniversary of Saund’s victory in 1956 congressional election. Several congressmen also wrote to the Stamp Advisory Committee, supporting the cause. Congressman Joe Wilson, Co-Chair of India Caucus, wrote, “It would be a matter of pride for the entire Asian American community to see the life of Congressman Saund honored with a commemorative U.S. postal stamp.”

In the US Congress, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-California) introduced a bill, H. R 120, the Dalip Singh Saund Post Office Building Designation Act, which would designate the United States Postal office at 30777 Rancho California Road in Temecula, California, as the Dalip Singh Saund Post Office Building. The resolution was unanimously passed and signed by President George Bush on July 21, 2005. Congressman Isa officially renamed the building at a formal ceremony on Feb 21, 2006 in the presence of a large gathering in Temecula. Inder Singh, the writer of this article, was officially invited to attend the renaming ceremony and was presented with US flag for his initiative.

Congressman Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) introduced a bill, H. R. 753 on July 22, 2004 (reintroduced on January 4, 2005 as H. R. 31), which called for the placement of a portrait of former Congressman Dalip Singh Saund in the US Capitol Building or inside a House office building. After approval, Congressman Wilson continued to work with the House Office of History and Preservation to finalize the portrait details.

On November 7, 2007, under the dome of the capitol building, Saund was honored in the Rayburn Room of the US Capitol when her 6-year-old great-granddaughter pulled back a blue curtain to uncover the official portrait of the late Dalip Singh Saund. Over 200 Indian-Americans from across the country, including several Sikhs in colorful turbans, along with several US lawmakers, filled the room during the unveiling ceremony. Saund’s daughter, Ellie Saund Ford, five grandchildren, including the eldest grandson Eric Saund and several great-grandchildren participated in the ceremony. Eric Saund said, “It is our hope that through this portrait, the life and service of Congressman D. S. Saund will continue to inspire others to their own form of great work.”

Jon Friedman, a portraitist, landscape painter and sculptor who sketched this official portrait of Congressman Dalip Singh Saund, acknowledged that he educated himself about the Indian-American community, the immigrant experience of the Sikhs who came to the US over 100 years ago and the struggle Saund had waged to stave off discrimination. This artist has painted many miniature figures on the side panel to detail the progression of journey of his life. With the Sikh symbol of Khanda, from his farming family in Punjab, young Dr. Saund in turban, Gandhi, Lincoln who had influenced his thinking, Judge Saund for Congress and his distinguished service culminating as a Congressman in the magnificent dome of the Capitol Hill, are painted with great finesse.

Congressman Wilson said, “From a small village in India to the halls of Congress, Dalip Singh Saund demonstrated that a person with perseverance and optimism can overcome tremendous obstacles and achieve remarkable successes. He became a political pioneer of the Asian American community. His relentless dedication is an inspiration for all Americans. Now, when Indian American families visit Congress, they can see Saund’s portrait, which will serve as a reminder of his legacy and proof that all Americans can achieve their dreams.”

“By permanently placing his portrait on Capitol Hill, we will commemorate his service and recognize America’s unique culture, which enables all Americans regardless of race, religion, or national origin, to reach the very heights of success,” Wilson said.

Speaker Pelosi, although she could not make it for the event, released official statement, which also described it as “truly a historic day. It is my pleasure to welcome to the Capitol of the United States, the People’s House, the portrait of the first Asian-American member of Congress, the Honorable Dalip Singh Saund.” She continued, “Dalip Singh Saund’s life is the American dream. An immigrant from India, he came to this country to further his education and worked hard to build his life and care for his family, despite the discrimination that many Asians faced during the 1920s.”

Congressman Jim McDemott, co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian-Americans, said, “Hon. Saund, was a trail blazer and his sense of purpose flowered when he became the Congressman. His power to make the difference regardless of whether you have turban or brown skin was amazing.”
Congressman Mike Honda, chair of Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, said, “Saund’s legacy lives because even as he represented his constituents, he never forgot that he was also a voice for his culture and the South Asian community. Because of his consciousness and advocacy on behalf of the Asian American community, he broke down barriers through the Luce-Cellar Act, and provided the way for the millions of future Asian Americans to participate politically as citizens in this country.”

Congressman Robert Brady concluded that the portrait of Hon. Saund would be a beacon of hope and inspiration for the generations to come.

The portrait shows Saund in the Cannon House Office Building, on the upper level of the Cannon Rotunda. On the right of the portrait, a series of images, painted as it is carved in stone, trace Saund’s life-journey. Saund’s oft-quoted remark, “There is no room in the United States of America for second-class citizenship,” appears below the portrait and visual narrative. It is rendered illusionistically using a conceit of gold carved letters on multi-colored marble.

At the state level in California, Assemblyman Rudy Bermudez moved resolution AJR 1 calling for an annual day of recognition to honor the late Dalip Singh Saund on his birthday September 20, for his outstanding achievement as the first native of Asia to be elected to the US Congress. Resolution AJR 1 officially became law when it was “chaptered” on July 6, 2005 by California Secretary of State.

The bust of late Congressman Saund was installed in the American Center Library in Delhi and unveiled by former Prime Minister I.K. Gujral on May 6, 2008 at an elegant ceremony.

In August 2000, the Government of India appointed High Level Committee on Indian Diaspora headed by Dr. L. M. Singhvi who submitted a comprehensive report in December 2001. Inder Singh sent Saund’s picture and insisted on it being included in the published report. At the first Pravasi Bhartiya Divas in New Delhi in 2003, the government named one of the conference halls as “Dalip Singh Saund Hall.”

It all started with a question from Phil Tajitsu Nash, “Why isn’t Saund better known?” In order to create more awareness about Saund, a seminar and tribute banquet was organized in January 2002. Since then, the steadfast efforts of some individuals, who used their clout, resources, time and energy, and got well deserved recognition in a variety of ways to the forgotten US Congressman of Indian origin. Today, Late Dr. Dalip Singh Saund, the first Asian Congressman in the United States and a pioneer of the Asian American community, has become an iconic figure for Indian Americans, particularly those seeking a political office.

Although this early period can be generally and correctly characterized as one of almost continuous population decline and socio-economic marginalization, it was also simultaneously a time of rising political consciousness, activism, and resistance to discriminatory government laws in the United States and to the rule of the British Raj in India. The story of this relatively small community’s difficult transformation from struggling economic sojourners to acquiring full US citizenship shortly after India herself achieved independence remains one of the most remarkable, but under appreciated, in American immigration history.

It is also a story about how the founding of the Stockton gurdwara in 1912 created both a physical place and a symbolic center for Sikh life that played a crucial role in community life over the next forty years. It created the sole Sikh worship center in the US until 1947. The Stockton gurdwara remains a revered historic structure and is an icon known to Sikhs around the world. It is an important cultural touchstone and holds a major place in the history of the Sikh Diaspora, particularly in California.

However, the second act in the American Sikh story, the period from 1946 to the present, is more remarkable still, resulting in an even more spectacular half-century of growth involving Sikh/Punjabi communities across the United States, beginning in the mid-20th century and continuing to today. The last 60 years are all the more remarkable when contrasted with chronic uncertainty that characterized the first five decades of their immigration history. If someone objectively examined the status and conditions of the original Pioneer Sikhs in California in the late 1940s, they would logically conclude that it was not at all clear that Sikhs could even survive, let alone ever prosper, in America.

Nevertheless it was during those initial long decades of general economic and demographic decline, social discrimination, and facing a continual and increasingly hostile, anti-Asian set of legal decisions, that Sikhs found ways to resist and circumvent these disadvantages. The community, especially in rural California, became galvanized by both domestic and international injustices. Sikhs responded to colonialism, institutionalized racism, and local discriminatory practices by seeking legal redress and supporting Sikh causes in America and India. The locus of much of this activity, secular and sacred, was, then as now, centered in the Stockton gurdwara.

I expect that this audience knows the basic outlines of Sikh early history in the US, but a brief review of how precarious the Sikh position was from the beginning can be summarized thus:

1. The first immigrants to North America were largely Punjabi male peasant farmers from the northwest of British-controlled India.

2. Eighty-five to ninety percent of whom identified themselves as Sikhs; ten to twelve percent were Punjabi Muslims, with the remainder Punjabi Hindus.

3. There were almost no South Asian women on the West coast in the first decade of immigration, and perhaps no more than one hundred ever entered the US prior to 1945. It was all but impossible to find a Sikh mate.

4. Concentrated on the West Coast, there were never more than six or seven thousand legal South Asians in residence, the majority (6,100) arriving between 1904-1911. They came largely from agrarian and/or military backgrounds. Moreover, in 1912, an Immigration Commission estimated that between one-half and three-fifths of the South Asian immigrants of that time could neither read nor write.

5. Between 1915-1929, some 1650 additional Sikhs arrived, but during the Depression years and throughout World War II only 183 additional South Asian legal immigrants were recorded.

6. However, in the first two decades of the 20th century some 6,750 South Asians were either deported or “voluntarily” left, many to support Ghadar and other anti-British political activities in India or abroad, or for personal reasons.

7. By 1930 the so-called “Hindu” population in California had declined to 3,130; by 1940 to 2,405; and by the end of the Second World War to less than 1,600 individuals.

8. Even factoring in a further possible 3000 illegals who sporadically filtered in via Mexico in the 1920s to 1930s, fewer than a total of ten thousand Sikhs ever came to the United States in the first half of the 20th century, and only 15% of those remained by mid-century.

9. The slow but inexorable decline of the original populations was somewhat offset by the formation in California of “Hindu-Mexican” (a.k.a. “Mexidu”) family units whose story has been most fully documented and detailed by Karen Leonard. This unusual social component was composed of some 400 bi-cultural families headed by South Asian Punjabi Sikh or Muslim males, their Spanish-heritage wives, and their offspring, eventually forming networks statewide. For practical terms, these mixed marriages formed a loose social network that provided Pioneer men with the only domestic stability they could create at the time.

To say that the initial conditions of Sikh immigration to America were not auspicious would be a Himalayan understatement.

The Gurdwara and Ghadar: Religion and Politics

Throughout all this time, in spite of difficult economic circumstances, a series of prejudicial, restrictive legislative acts (e.g., Alien Land Laws, 1913; Barred Zone Provision, 1917; Thind Supreme Court decision, 1923) and sporadic US government surveillance, Sikhs in America continued to organize and lobby for their rights. The locus of much of this activity was the Stockton gurdwara. Although severely restricted for fifty years in their choices of occupation, marriage partners, freedom to travel abroad, own land, and participate in mainstream political activities, they continued to gather at the Stockton gurdwara to debate and organize.

From the beginning the gurdwara served as an important nexus of Sikh social, religious, and political life. It simultaneously functioned as a the combination of church, dining hall, rest home, guest house, employment information center, meeting place, and sanctuary where Punjabi culture and language were understood and appreciated.

The role of the Sikh temple as a political actor has been well-documented as part of the Ghadar-era, so well in fact that the political machinations and in-fighting among the various parties (political factions) tends to sometimes overshadow the more mundane and central functions of the gurdwara as a social institution and welfare society. Nevertheless, it is difficult to discuss the gurdwara during the early years of Punjabi presence in America without referring to Ghadar activities because the Pacific Coast Khalsa Diwan Society (PCKDS) and the Ghadar Party were largely composed of the same membership and financially supported by the same people. It is somewhat paradoxical that although the two organizations differed dramatically in their specific institutional goals and activities, the PCKDS and the gurdwara were the only two constants in terms of formal organizations available to Sikhs for many decades.

The PCKDS in that era was a socio-religious collective which was interested primarily in managing the gurdwara and providing support to its members, most of whom were, of course, Sikhs. It was, strictly speaking, the governing body for the Sikh worship site.

On the other hand, the Ghadar Party was clearly a militant political association dedicated to violent overthrow of British rule in India. It originated in California as an indigenous response to external circumstances, although it certainly was a modern revolutionary movement, one which eventually achieved international dimensions. Beginning as a home-grown organization, within a few years it forged extensive global networks including links to Hong Kong, Thailand, Russia, and Ireland. It became a force that eventually directly affected international relations among many European countries including Germany and England, as well as influencing both Canadian and American foreign relations.

This caused political problems for the entire California Sikh community because it regularly attracted the unwanted attentions of the immigration service, FBI, British Secret Service, and state and local authorities in California and elsewhere. The Ghadar Party was a spectacular and exciting element in the lives of California Sikhs, but its international heyday lasted roughly seven years, from 1913 until the end of World War I. Thereafter, Ghadar became almost wholly a Sikh enterprise and, as it was from the beginning, Punjabi farmers throughout the American West were its main financial backers from 1913 until as late as 1947.

Never particularly effective in implementing its primary goal, Ghadar nevertheless survived British, British-Indian, and American government surveillance and counter-intelligence, the deportation of some leaders, and the spectacular “Hindu Conspiracy Trial” of 1917-1918 in San Francisco, California. Sikhs also continued to publish Ghadar materials throughout the early period and only ceased upon Indian Independence.

For all its political activity, the Ghadar was also an important social institution that facilitated all manner of communication among its members. Although sometimes debates over policy and tactics could cause divisiveness, it also provided a feeling of cultural solidarity, and provided a rationale and impetus for action. In the face of continuous economic discrimination and social exclusion, it gave the Sikhs and other South Asians a “party” and cause of their own, one with a clear purpose and high ideals. Both the gurdwara and Ghadar organizations provided a reason to band together. For many men these activities were the only “social functions” they had besides group drinking and religious services.

While Ghadar meetings took place across California, the Stockton gurdwara frequently provided a forum for Ghadar discussions and planning. Men and their Mexican wives remembered traveling to Stockton from around the state five or six times a year, and how these occasions combined attendance at religious services with Ghadar fund raising, strategy sessions, and political discussions. As one old timer characterized it, “One day was for praying and the other for plotting.”

Following World War One, Ghadar ideals and goals continued to impact the political thinking and ambitions of many California Sikhs, but its importance gradually diminished over the decades. In retrospect, it seems that the social and religious aspects of the gurdwara as a social institution became dominant over time. The longer the community resided in California, the more they realized that Sikhs had serious domestic obstacles to overcome. While they never abandoned the Ghadar goal, they increasingly turned their political attention to issues of social and legal rights within America during the later inter-war years. They also continued to work hard and take advantage of any economic opportunities that arose. Similarly, once they realized that, for whatever reasons, they were unlikely to be able to return home, they shifted mentally from being sojourners and temporary economic migrants, and began to realize that their future and their fortunes were going to be forged primarily within an American context.

In spite of severe social and legal barriers, many South Asians did well on the West Coast. Within less than a decade of their arrival, many had established themselves in farming ventures, often in partnership with other Punjabis. They quickly and expertly assessed the local markets and crops. And while they worked at almost anything that came to hand in the early period, including building railroads and bridges, logging, mining, and road construction in Canada and the American Northwest, it was in California agriculture that they found their most promising and lasting niche.

California land records show an initial Sikh pattern of leasing, followed, if possible, by purchase. Sikhs were already in the Central California valley by 1906. A few became successfully involved in establishing rice culture in the Northern Sacramento Valley, as well as undertaking orchard and vineyard cultivation in Yuba and Sutter Counties. By 1908, they were in the Imperial Valley of southern California where they helped initiate cotton growing, and, later, vegetable row crops. A 1920 state report listed 85,000 acres in the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys as under the control of “Hindus” and an additional 30,000 in the Imperial valley, most of which was leased.

Ninety miles north of us in Yuba and Sutter counties of the northern Sacramento Valley, the Sikhs began to coalesce very early and eventually settled down, forming a northern nucleus that served as a small, but relatively stable, California Sikh community throughout their early history. Much of their success can be traced to cultivating 10-30 acre peach, prune, almond, or walnut farms in the Yuba City-Marysville area. This pattern endured through the difficult 1920-1940 period, when the local Sikh population eventually dwindled to around 350-400 persons owning less than 1,000 acres by 1946. Not surprisingly, in spite of the limited opportunities and legal restrictions the early Sikhs endured, this same location currently contains the largest agricultural concentration of Sikhs outside of India (10,000+) and now boasts third- and, even, forth-generation Sikh farm families.

In the difficult interwar period, just as Sikhs shifted their attitudes towards making a life in America, American attitudes towards empire and other peoples was beginning to change. Colonial attitudes towards India that had been so common in the society up to that time were giving way to growing support for Indian self-determination and self-governance in South Asia and elsewhere.

Simultaneously, the widespread reflexive racism at home was diminishing somewhat. By the end of the 1930s, in addition to Ghadar, a second wave of South Asian organizations arose to promote both Indian Independence abroad, and the right of citizenship for South Asians who already resided in the US or might wish immigrate. This time, new political centers arose outside of California in New York, Chicago, and, even, Arizona, and they became ever more effective in lobbying, public relations, and garnering support from mainstream media and federal governmental figures and agencies.

After decades of generally unsuccessful political activity, Sikhs saw the tide of public opinion regarding South Asians, domestic and foreign, turn more positive during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Many individuals, American and South Asian, were involved in achieving the rights of citizenship that were finally confirmed on July 2, 1946, when the US Congress passed the Luce-Celler bill. However, Sardar Jigit (J.J.) Singh, a successful New York businessman, was a key figure whose political savvy and contacts in mainstream journalism were crucial factors that led to passage of this historic legislation.

Incidentally, this legal victory was the first and, to that time, only, successful outcome achieved by Sikhs at the national level since they arrived nearly a half-century earlier. It is also symbolic that the legislation in America was passed over a year before India herself became independent on August 15, 1947.

Although this law eliminated the ban on Indian immigration and allowed Indians to become naturalized citizens, it was far from a total success. The impact of obtaining citizenship remained greatly restricted as the total number of East Indians allowed to immigrate was set at a mere 100 per year, a quota which can only be considered simultaneously symbolic and ludicrous given that India had a population of 400 million. More important, of course, than the actual numbers, was the legal precedent. After nearly thirty years of systematic exclusion and another quarter-of-a-century of being denied citizenship, the Luce-Celler bill restored to East Indians the option of United States’ residence and naturalization, and the freedom to travel freely to India and return.

However, in a final perverse twist of fate, Indian Independence did not result in a whole nation-state, but a bifurcated, “Partitioned” India. Thus, as the first half of the 20th Century wound down, events occurred which paradoxically brought both vindication and redress for Sikhs in America, but also contained the devastating reality that, shortly following their American victory, the gaining of independence was achieved at a tragically high cost in lives and loss of territory. It literally left the Punjabi homeland shattered, and large swaths of it ceded to the new nation of Pakistan.

Of course, over the subsequent sixty years, the growth of the Sikh community in America has surpassed all expectations, and resulted in transformation beyond any the Pioneer Sikhs could have imagined. But the foundations of this renaissance were built on the financial and legal struggles of those early Sikhs in California, which was inextricably intertwined with history of the Stockton gurdwara. All South Asians in America owe a great debt to those Pioneer ancestors. It is fitting that we should be here today recognizing the Stockton gurdwara as the foundational Sikh religious institution in the United States.

As we celebrate the Centenary of the founding of this key North American religious center, it is appropriate to take a minute or two to discuss some links between the Stockton gurdwara and the institution that is our host today, the University of the Pacific. There are some interesting, but little known connections between university and the California Sikhs.

The University of the Pacific is a private university originally chartered in 1851 in Santa Clara. It moved to San Jose in 1871, and remained in the Bay area until 1925, when it relocated to Stockton. Although the University was established in California long before the Sikhs arrived, the gurdwara was constructed thirteen years before Pacific arrived in the central valley. This put both organizations in the geographic center of California Sikh culture and community, because within a 500 mile radius of Stockton lived the majority of American Sikhs in the US from 1900 to 1965 (95% of Sikhs in the US resided therein until the 1960s). In other words, Stockton and greater Central Valley generally constituted the historic core of Pioneer Sikh communities.

However, very few historians or social scientists of that time took much note of early Sikh presence. One notable exception was Harold S. “Jake” Jacoby (1907-2000). He graduated from Pacific in 1928, and returned for a long career here as a beloved teacher and administrator, serving for 37 years as a faculty member. I mention him only because Jake was one of the very earliest US scholars who took any interest in the Sikh communities in their own backyards.

In fact, in 1956, he published one of the first, detailed, and still-useful pamphlets on Sikhs in America titled, “A Half-Century Appraisal of East Indians in the United States.” The material was based on fifteen years of interviews with Pioneer Sikhs. The report was originally written as an invited research lecture he gave to the faculty on this campus. He maintained a life-long interest in and friendships with Sikhs from throughout California. It is therefore appropriate that a half-century later we should acknowledge his early scholarly interest at this time and in this place.

I sincerely hope that further academic research focusing the earlier periods of Sikh history continues, because I am convinced that although there has been an explosion of literature on Diasporic Sikhs around the world, I do not believe that the present picture of the first half-century is anywhere near as complete as it could be.

For example, in the past six months I have become aware of some very interesting historical research being done in the Pacific Northwest, primarily in Oregon and Washington, using a combination of newspaper archives and public records that seems to have the potential to expand our understanding of what the “facts on the ground” were in certain Pacific Northwest locales where Sikhs had settled in the first few decades on immigration to North America. The first is an article by Johanna Ogden titled, “Ghadar, Historical Silences, and Notions of Belonging: Early 1900s Punjabis of the Columbia River,” published in July in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, Vol. 113 (Summer 2012), No. 2, pp. 164-197, Portland, Oregon. As part of her analysis she begins by discussing a keynote address by Har Dayal in Astoria, Oregon, on May 30, 1913.

She considers this meeting and speech as the opening salvo in the founding of Ghadar. She then reviews both the responses of local Sikhs and Hindus to this call-to-arms, and the social, political, and economic backlash that the presence of Punjabis in the Columbia River basin provoked from the general public. Her larger question is why this chapter of Oregon history has been essentially erased from the prevailing dominant narrative. She notes:

“…while they were not physically driven from the state, the Punjabis have been run out of Oregon historically. There are no identifiable vestiges of them in Oregon’s landscape, little recognition of their lives or accomplishments exists in our collective memory, and the watershed founding of Ghadar is largely forgotten. If remembered at all, Ghadar’s Oregon story is eclipsed by that of San Francisco, the later home of its office and press.” (Ogden, 2012, p.166)

In fact, the press she refers to, which was located in Oakland and produced much of the Ghadar literature of the inter-war period, was recently acquired by the Stockton gurdwara where it will be on public display.

A second article on Sikh activities in the Pacific Northwest that has not been published yet, is titled, “(In)visible Minority: The Indian Community in the Pacific Northwest after the ‘Anti-Hindoo’ Riots of 1907-8.” The author effectively argues that, in the aftermath of various violent encounters between Sikhs and local communities in Washington and Oregon, rather than leaving those locations as some previous researchers have suggested, they remained for decades in those Pacific Northwest regions. However, isolated and discriminated against, many of these micro-communities persisted for decades, but kept such a low profile that they seemed to almost disappear from the historical record.

Both authors have gleaned new, and often surprising, information about the lives of early Sikh sojourners who lived far from the California nexus, and who endured significant hardship to do so. Much more of this kind of finely detailed and documented research would be welcome by anyone interested in the constructing whole story of immigration on the West Coast, and who wishes to include fully and accurately all the myriad groups who participated in the building of America, including the Sikhs.

So let me conclude by offering two quotes I think are apropos to our subject today. The first is the well-known Shakespearean line: “The Past is Prologue,” from his play The Tempest, because it seems a particularly apt metaphor to describe the arc of Sikh history from the first half of the 20th century until today.

The second is from William Faulkner, who so wisely noted, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

It seems fitting that we periodically express our collective appreciation for the sacrifices and hard work of the Sikh Pioneers. It was those early efforts that set the foundation, which, eventually, created the successes that all Sikhs in America benefit from. The role of the Stockton gurdwara lies at the core of this achievement. It continues to play a key role in California Sikh religious life. This heritage is therefore, in every sense, a living legacy…one which we honor and celebrate today.

Thank you.

He was a class apart. He had no ambition for his personal success after he was touched profoundly by a seer who had considerable following in Punjab. His submission to his spiritual guide was complete and unselfish. His master gave him a mission that ranged from organizing the community to enshrining freedom, peace, and spiritual poise in their lives. He transferred community wisdom to them that gave them a rare courage to face unique challenges in their social and political life.

Sant Teja Singh’s name is associated with Sikh Gurdwaras in England, Canada and United States of America. Sant Attar Singh, a renowned saint of Mastuana, sent him to the western world with a message that there was nothing in occult and ridhi sidhis. Swamis from India were swarming the whole western world at that time with claims to supernatural powers by psychical and magical means. They were urging westerners to get absolute lordship of world by acquisition of mystic power to subjugate others through ancient mantras. Teja Singh gave a different message to the world, teaching that nothing was higher than the hard work, honest living, and devotion to the Creator. It is very important to know the multidimensional life of such a unique personality.

Known as Niranjan Singh Mehta before getting baptized in 1905, Sant Teja Singh was born in 1877 and belonged to village Balowali, district Gujranwala. He was son of a physician. After M.A. LLB in 1901, he started his law practice but could not work for more than 7 days. In the meanwhile, he got an offer of Headmastership of an Anglo Sanskrit School. He worked for one year in the school. Then he challenged the civil service exam in the Salt department. In 1902, he became the Assistant Superintendent at Sanbhar Lake.

His western education had turned his head. He would not care for any known practices such as giving respect to Guru Granth Sahib, preachers, or saints. He wouldn’t bow his head before Guru Granth Sahib, because he thought it was not less than idol worship. But he otherwise was very honest and sympathetic to the cause of needy people.

Teja Singh must be among very few Sikhs who had got the opportunity to get western education. He experienced a great divide between what he learned in the college and what his grandparents and parents had taught him. He was clear only about one thing — he would serve the commoners for the rest of his life.

On his transfer to Rajanpur, his duties were those of a police officer. He was supposed to arrest poor people who would make salt on their own. He felt morally opposed to such actions. “That my natural aptitude was more towards imparting education and then it started weighing on my mind that the English are bringing intelligent Sikhs under their influence so that they could instill slavery in them, therefore, I thought that I should mix with them and fill their minds instead with freedom.”

He decided to quit the job since it was not his way to lord over poor and helpless people.

He took a one year leave from the Salt Department upon being offered a job as Vice Principal of Khalsa College, Amritsar. The question of bowing head before Guru Granth Sahib still bothered him, so he made some reluctant accommodations. He decided to go to Gurdwara when people were still asleep so that no one could see him. Then he reasoned that since he didn’t accept the job for money, but entirely for Sewa, he wouldn’t mind observing whatever was expected of him.

The first thing Teja Singh did in Khalsa College was to set up the Guru Nanak Club. The purpose was to help in education of those Sikhs who could not afford money. He invited needy students to his quarters to share meals with them. He instilled in them spirit of freedom. Some of these students later became well-known in public life. During his stint in Khalsa College Amritsar, Bhai Teja Singh felt transfigured, chastened, and purified. He was drawn towards Guru Granth Sahib as if it was a magnet. “Thy name brings glory, Nanak seeks good of all.” After prayer, Teja Singh fell in front of Granth Sahib with a thud. Subsequently, students would support him from suddenly falling before the Granth Sahib.

Teja Singh was a topper in whole of Punjab in physics and chemistry. He didn’t believe in any supernatural phenomena. He was very critical of ritualistic practices. In his own words, Teja Singh considered it not due to some hallucinations as others often interpreted, but it was the magnetic power of Gurbani that would draw him. He often expressed his doubts about Sikh saints and declared he couldn’t distinguish between a saint or a non-saint. Professor Jodh Singh, who later rose to the position of the college principal thought that only Sant Attar Singh could dispel his doubts. True indeed it was, the course of his life changed forever.

After completing MA LLB in 1901, Bhai Teja Singh realized he had wasted his life getting worldly knowledge. In the whole career of 16 years education, nobody taught him a word of Gurmukhi nor did he feel inspired to learn it. Learning Punjabi was projected as a step backward in academic life. “I would go sometimes in camps of Arya Samaj or Brahmo Samaj for spiritual guidance. I would consider it idol-worship to bow before Guru Granth Sahib.”

Teja Singh’s brush with Anglo-Vedic education in the beginning of his career might have filled him with disrespect for Sikh scripture.

For him to be a Headmaster of Anglo-Sanskrit School Bhera was, however, an attractive proposal. As a headmaster, Teja Singh recognized the importance of Punjabi and started reading Guru Granth Sahib in short versions. “But my heart was without reverence to the scriptures. I would put Guru Granth on the table and read it with shoes on. Guru is always forgiving and wondrous. Sometimes I would be struck with the Shabad. I was already devoted to serve the poor. One day I thought that it was better to educate the poor than to brag about my status as a Salt officer.”

He felt moved by the miserable condition of poor people. They had no education, no idea of dignity of life, no will to be free from shackles of poverty. Natural resources like salt were not available to them. Laws were passed to punish who violated these restrictions. “God has gifted free salt to the poor. You are putting them in jail for the sake of your loyalty to the British.”

In the college Gurdwara, when the prayer ended, “oh Nanak may you attain glory with the Naam and may good come to all on earth,” Teja Singh experienced a dizzying, paralyzing sensation and dropped like a log before Guru Granth Sahib. He would feel ecstatic and embrace whoever he saw first in the morning.

When he met with Sant Attar Singh, Teja Singh felt a strong bond with Santji, who urged him to forget his personal grievances and forgive those who he thought harmed him. Sant Attar Singh later gave him a mission for Sikhs in the West. He guided him to observe the following rules:

1. Keep your Sikhi form intact; don’t argue with anyone. If anyone asks you say it with folded hands that we made nothing.

2. Where you go build Gurdwaras.

3. Convey my message to citizens of western countries that there is nothing in occult; spiritual poise is far greater and enduring than the position of worldly power.

4. If one wants to deliver a lecture, one shouldn’t, if there is a reluctance to do so, one must deliver the lecture.

He left for England on August 6, 1906 and arrived on August 24. He was accompanied by his wife, two children, and four others: Bhai Bhagat Singh, Amar Singh of Guru Nanak Bhandar, Dharm Anant Singh, and Hari Singh Basra.

In England he remembered Sant Attar Singh’s words. “A resolve was made that Sikhs who came to England cut their hair and give up their turban, the stamp of Guru’s Sikhs. I made up my mind to reduce such a trend.” Teja Singh faced unwelcome looks from time to time. In one of the incidents, he says, “Once I walked with my wife and children through the High Gate Bazaar. Hundreds of curious people gathered and kept walking behind us. In the end, a gentle lady opened her door and showed us in. She scolded them and made them leave us alone.”

Teja Singh considered such hostility as a natural curiosity. But he advised that Sikhs should be able to explain as to why they maintain their hair and turban. “First this problem comes to everybody. But when we lived in them for some time and tell them the whole thing about turban’s importance and then they respect you and even greet you with Sat Sri Akal.”

His self-conviction and communication skills were enormous. On learning that a cap is compulsory in Cambridge, he went to Downing College Cambridge and met Tutor Mr. Jackson. After he acquainted Jackson with the Sikh religion, he allowed Teja Singh to wear a turban. He writes: “It was for the first time in the history of Cambridge University that a turbaned Sikh was allowed to take part in all aspects of the ancient and independent center of learning.”

He took admission in science and studied zoology, chemistry and physics.

He rented an apartment and installed Guru Granth Sahib in one room. Many Sikhs started coming to him in Cambridge on the weekend services. Next Sunday he laid the foundation of Khalsa Jatha British Isles. Guru Granth Sahib that he brought with him remained installed in London Dharmsala.
With assistance from a Maratha, D. G. Panse, Teja Singh helped others to settle in England. While he was there, M. K. Gandhi also visited London. Others who were in London and stayed at the same time were Madame Cama, Lala Har Dayal, Charlotte Despard, Madan Lal Dhingra, David Garnett, H. M. Hyndman, Dadabhai Naoroji.

In the summer, there was a program in Columbia University for teacher training. He sent his application and got a scholarship for $150. While in Cambridge, he learned through news and letters that Sikhs in Canada faced many problems. He asked for permission from Sant Attar Singh and Sunder Singh Majithia to travel there to help them in their hour of need.

Before completing his degree at Cambridge, he moved to Columbia University New York on a summer scholarship. One of his teachers arranged public lectures for him on the spiritual traditions of India. The first topic was “Guru Nanak and the Sant Tradition,” the second “On Indian Society.” He was just in his twenties then. He was asked to give weekly lectures. The attendance increased and he explained that the path of ridhi sidhi was inappropriate for spiritual progress. His two lectures were covered by English newspapers in North America.

He traveled to Vancouver at the invitation of Sikhs and did some community work in British Columbia. When he returned to Columbia, Teja Singh found he had many Americans among his followers who were eagerly awaiting his return to New York. One, a Mr. T. C. Crawford, got interested in Gurbani. One day, he visited Teja Singh early in the morning, telling him:

I built my right to be a shareholder of a gold mine in Jacksonville, California. My friends who have turned unfaithful to me want to deprive me of that. I need $50,000 to retain my ownership of the mine. In exchange, I can transfer one-fourth share of the gold mine to the Sikhs. I have been intuitively told during my meditation that only you can help me.

Leaving his studies aside, Teja Singh again started for Canada, where thousands of Sikhs needed him most. The Canadian government had planned to deport all Sikhs to Honduras in South America. Canadian Sikhs complained of a deep-rooted prejudice against them, stating with heavy hearts: “Canadian people say that we have no jobs and no other sources to support us. Our living is not clean. Actually they are jealous of us. We have contributed about $20,000 to build our Gurdwara Sahib and have joint Langar to feed any needy person. All of us earn a good living. We live well and take our bath everyday while they don’t take shower for days.”

The Commissioner from Ottawa took Bhai Sat Nagar Singh and Bhai Sham Singh Dogra for their approval of the report on sending Sikhs to Honduras. Sikhs felt as if jealous people conspired to uproot their religious flag and own their property. Teja Singh stated, “I am sent here to help my brothers and sisters.”

Hearing the lamentations of Canadian Sikhs, he decided to drop his studies at Columbia University. He applied his mind to revamp the image of Sikhs in Canada. He knew people react due to ignorance; Sikhs’ outward appearance was a threat to their culture. When the same people learned the beauty of Sikh principles of hard work, sharing, and brotherhood of mankind, he knew they would think differently.

With the guidance of Teja Singh, Sikhs registered Mining and Trust Company and bought a quarter share in Mr. Crawford’s gold mine. They decided to preach the truth about Sikhs in Canada and bought 250 acres near Eagle Harbor. Many Canadians showed interest in teachings of Guru Nanak, and Dr. Knapp and Mrs. Campbell Johnson became devotees of Guru Nanak.

Special “Awareness Lectures” were arranged to counter the media propaganda against Sikhs. “Professor Teja Singh warned the opponents to think of the Sikh anger, for they belonged to a race of doughty warriors. It would be unfair and against natural justice to deport Sikhs to British Honduras by deception and fraud.”

On December 12, 1908, details of Honduras episode appeared in the press. The excerpts are given below. The report identifies Sant Teja Singh metaphorically as a Buddhist. The newspaper, The Vancouver Daily Province, reported as follows on Saturday, December 12, 1908:

Mystery and Power of Teja Singh — Remarkable Buddhist scholar who has come to Vancouver to lead his countrymen — Regarded by them as a Demi-God
The East Indian problem in British Columbia has entered upon a new phase fraught with grave possibilities — how is the present situation to be explained?

[Prof. Teja Singh’s] countrymen here almost worship him. He is regarded as a veritable demi-god…. There was no jingoism in his two hours address. He spoke calmly and dispassionately. The professor showed himself to be a man of profound erudition with a marvelous grasp of European civilization and intimate knowledge of the occult and oriental philosophy. He disclaimed against the rapacity of western nations and denounced the civilization that was based on material wealth…. Prof. Teja Singh talks like a man who believes that he has a sacred mission to perform. At the lecture he proudly declared that his coming here was providential and that his steps have been directed by Guru Nanak, the mystical energy or spirit worshipped by the Sikhs. His influence during his stay here has even extended to white people.

Prof. Teja Singh is a Sikh. He led the opposition which was successful in preventing Mr. Harkin from reading the official report last Sunday…. He is a great leader, a man capable of meeting any emergency…. Prof. Teja Singh is unalterably opposed to the removal of his people to British Honduras. He has the courage of his profession or convictions. The professor takes the view that the East Indians are satisfied with conditions in this province and that 70 percent of them are doing well. He estimates the balance, or 30 percent, are unemployed. He, however, maintains they are not a burden on the white population, as the Hindus and Sikhs practice the virtue of charity. He claims that a Sikh banking institution will probably advance money to a proposed land company which intends to buy up large tracts of land in British Columbia….

“If the Dominion Government gives my people a respite of three months, the East India problem in British Columbia will be solved,” was his utterance a few days ago…. The door of the basement of the Sikh temple already displays the titles of a mining and trust as well as a lumber company. Prof. Teja Singh, the idol of the Sikhs and Hindus, is a familiar figure on the streets…. He looks like a man who is terribly in earnest. This impression is confirmed when he opens his lips. His conversation is pointed and dignified. He speaks faultless English, with a slight accent. His wide reading is illustrated when discussing any topic relating to India. He has a fund of information almost encyclopedic in character to drive home any argument he quotes historical authorities. The religious and philosophical system of every age and civilization, political science, political economy, Biblical criticism, modern social reforms, are equally at his fingertips…. Teja Singh is never weary of laying down the principle that the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man will never be realized until mankind gets rid of its inherent selfishness. Of the ultimate triumph of the human race he entertains no doubt. Whether the brotherhood will come tomorrow or a million years later hence, he asserts, all depends upon the abolition of selfishness, the subjugation of the ego, the annihilation of self by the spirit of a divine altruism.

He says, “Money acquired at the cost of human suffering is regarded as a curse. It serves no good purpose and retards the goal to which the world is drifting.”

This is a man who in less than five weeks in Vancouver has animated Hindus and Sikhs with courage and confidence in themselves. There is something sublime about their devotion to him. Watch an East Indian meets him on the street. When Teja Singh approaches, the other bows in abject humility, at the same time crossing his hands and uttering a salutation in an undertone. He is their guardian, philosopher, and friend. Any argument that he was inspired by any other motive than pure unselfishness would be regarded as high treason. Teja Singh is the uncrowned king of the East Indians in British Columbia. But his influence reaches farther. He is regarded in India as one of the strongest champions of the so-called national movement now agitating millions of natives and which the British authorities regard as a purely seditious one. He is in constant touch with educated men of his own and other races in the Indian Empire….

Prof. Teja Singh will tell the enquirer that nothing has set up a more impassable barrier between the peoples of the east and west than the profound discrepancy between Christian profession and practice. The deceitful selfishness, the rapacity and bloodshed with which Christian nations have established their power in the Orient, the viciousness of the earlier adventurers, have thoroughly alienated sympathy and destroyed confidence….

Prof. Teja Singh will also tell the enquirer that recent scientific discoveries awaken a strange echo in the philosophy of the east in both Hindu and Buddhist lands….

The veil of Maya cast over mankind which produces the delusion of the ego of finite personality, and the Buddhist belief that the desire for individual existence is the root of all suffering and that true happiness comes alone from the perception of the transitoriness of all things and from the gradual conquest of the error of self. Buddhism [meant Sikhism], according to Teja Singh, finds its goal rather in the delight of a deep appreciation of the realities of existence in the exercise of the higher mental faculties, in a life transfused with everyday beauty, than in the possession of innumerable means of advancing wealth and commerce, of gratifying sense, of promoting mere bodily comfort.

Teja Singh is a Buddhist. To his people he is more. He is their leader and lawgiver, a veritable Guru Nanak, the sage who reformed their religion centuries ago. He decided for them whether they should go to British Honduras or remain in British Columbia and take chances in a hide and seek game with the deportation officers during the winter months. But Prof. Teja Singh has no fears for the future; he feels able to look after the welfare of his confiding fellow countrymen.

Two days later, on December 14, 1908, the British were alarmed to read a report by Colonel E. J. E. Swayne, Governor of Honduras, as published in the reputable Vancouver newspaper, The World. The report validated Teja Singh’s observations, stating that although Sikhs were agitated, they never turned violent and were not willing to leave Canada. The newspaper carried Teja Singh’s comments: “Any forced eviction of the Indians might incite 50,000 Sikhs in the Imperial Army to rebel, and to quell this rebellion they would have to send at least two lakhs soldiers.” He further wrote in his report that Professor Teja Singh had unified all Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus from the Punjab, as well as Brahmans from the Northwest and from lower Bengal, on one platform in a way that could not have happened in India.
The newspapers clearly outlined how Indians of diverse backgrounds were united to defeat the Canadian government’s design to illegally deport them to unfriendly regions of the British Empire. The anxiety that such a unity of people could throw the British out of India opened eyes of the custodians of the British Empire. They preferred to close their eyes to the embarrassment caused by this incident and drew curtain on the Honduras chapter permanently. This created a sense of self-respect and dignity in all Indians.
The British and Canadians contrived to poison mutual relations of Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs in Canada, because their unity was detrimental to saving India for the British Crown. Global efforts started to contaminate the very source of this cosmic energy. There was no dearth of manpower, resources and wealth. Afraid to lose the ill-gotten wealth of India, the British Empire targeted everyone who stood for Brotherhood of Mankind and unleashed poison all around that ultimately infected all of Europe in World War I. The editorial of The B.C. Saturday Sunset of December 12, 1908 expressed its stunning revelation that the Canadian government must dare to confront the unity of Indo-Canadians:

Hitherto the Hindus and Sikhs have been regarded in this province as misguided and possibly deluded victims who had been induced to locate in a land which was quite unsuited to them in many respects. We had somehow learned to think of them as poor simple creatures who knew no better than to come to this country, where nature had stacked the cards against them and who were up against a combination of circumstances over which neither they nor us had control.

The net result is that we are getting our eyes opened to the real character of the Hindus and Sikhs. We are learning that the rank and file of them are being led by clever educated men for purposes not yet clear. Whatever these purposes may be, apparently they have little to do with the real interests of the Hindus or Sikhs, otherwise, why should they have manipulated matters to prevent them from hearing the report of the government officials upon the prospects of Honduras…. It would seem that the Government will now be quite justified in deporting all Hindus and Sikhs who are not self-supporting and to rigorously enforce vigorous measures to prevent any more from coming to this country.

Khalsa Diwan Vancouver became a registered company. The media for the first time stressed Sikhs were working very hard to support Canada’s economy. The systematic campaign to stereotype Sikhs was fully exposed. Sikhs passed a resolution to completely reject any proposal related with Honduras and determined to assert their right to live in Canada. Since the resolution was passed in the Diwan Hall, the commissioner insisted not to remove shoes for announcing the report in the main hall. On hearing shouts of “Bole so Nihal,” he left the premises in utter desperation.

On visiting Victoria, in Canada, Teja Singh reformed Sikhs who had made drinking their favorite habit. He gave his sermon and prepared them to be true Sikhs. They got ready to build the Gurdwara and promised to contribute one month of pay right away.

Teja Singh met Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones, Lord Bishop of the largest Unitarian Church of Chicago. They exchanged their views on world peace and the role of religions in it. After listening to Teja Singh’s discourse on spirituality, Rev. Jones stated, “Brother Teja Singh, Light shall come again from the East. We in the West are quite unfit for it.” On the request of Rev. Jones, Teja Singh was invited to attend the World Congress of Free Christianity and Religious Progress in Berlin.

Reports of Teja Singh’s participation in Berlin Congress appeared in The Christian Register of October 6, October 13, and November 10, all in 1910. Rev. Charles W. Wendte wrote about Teja Singh’s discourse in the following terms:

Professor Teja Singh of Lahore (Punjab) University, the Sikh scholar who addressed the Berlin Congress on the religion of his people — a theistic form of faith — is now pursuing a six months course of study on philosophical and other topics at Harvard University. He may be secured for occasional Sunday evening addresses.

We learn from Christian Life that a religious society for the promotion of universal religion on the lines of Brahmo Samaj of India, but to the use of Mohammedan, and Christian, as well as Hindu Scriptures, in its worship is in process of formation among Indian residents in London.